Lil Wayne’s Rap-Rock Rebirth as Lame as Kid Rock

With smash hit singles like “Lollipop” and “Love in this Club,” millions of records sold and eight Grammy nominations bestowed upon his most recent album, Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne has pretty well proven that he is the king of the hip-hop/rap scene at the moment. So, what’s next?

He wants to be a guitar-toting rock star, of course.

The new Lil Wayne album, Rebirth, doesn’t hit shelves until April 7, but news of Wayne’s move to a more rock-oriented sound is spreading fast. Lil Wayne recently debuted some of his new sound with a live performance broadcast on Facebook.

The idea of rap and rock coming together is nothing new, the most prominent example of the genre-blurring combination Aerosmith and Run DMC on 1986’s “Walk This Way.” Groups like the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine and Linkin Park have successfully combined rap and rock, too.

Of course, rap-rock isn’t always quite so appetizing, take, for example, Kid Rock’s horrible mix of the worst elements of rap and the most played out rock riffs (um, leeching off of “Sweet Home Alabama” in “All Summer Long” is not cool).

Clearly, mixing rap and rock has pretty mixed results, but we’re willing to give Lil Wayne and his guitar playing skills a chance. However, if Metallica grows dreadlocks and tries to cross into rap, we will not give them a chance. We’re funny that way.

So, how will Lil Wayne’s rock’n’roll experiment play out?
Let’s take a listen and find out. 

We’re definitely in favor of rappers using more live instruments instead of samples and backing tracks, so maybe this is a step in the right direction.

First up is “Prom Queen.” Featured in Lil Wayne’s Facebook session video, “Prom Queen” mixes heavily processed and flat vocals that are slow, unmelodic and generally bad. It sounds like bad karaoke, and ends up sounding like Lil Wayne fronting Linkin Park.

We’d be willing to guess that this is probably going to be the case for the rest of Rebirth as well, tired and uninspired, but people will still heap accolades on it. It’s actually pretty awful, although nobody will ever be willing to admit it. Surprisingly, Ludacris’s lukewarm collaboration with Canadian mall punks Sum 41 was much more interesting.

It’s a shame that Lil Wayne didn’t opt for something a little more punk rock or raw, but this bland mess is likely to appeal to his legions of fans anyway.