Album Details

• Artist: Lil Wayne
• Album: Rebirth
• Label: Cash Money
• Year of Release: 2010
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: kev_stev on 2010-02-02

To young music fans, the success of Bob Dylan may be puzzling.  His raw, nasally vocals and sparse instrumentation, initially just his lonesome, acoustic guitar and harmonica, are not exactly immediately accessible in a world where synthesizers and auto-tune dominate the mainstream.

However, despite his unorthodox and minimal recordings, Dylan flourished, mostly because fans embraced his unique approach to music writing and singing.  His lyrics spoke directly to a counterculture generation while his seemingly untrained vocals were cemented as his inimitable style, which is why he can still pick up an acoustic guitar and his albums will sell.

Conversely, though he has adopted a Dylan-like legacy for himself, older folks tend not to understand the rise of Lil Wayne.  Notorious for his eccentricities, Wayne has unorthodox, sometimes gurgling, sometimes raspy, and sometimes weirdly sexual vocals that listeners also have embraced and now expect from all of his material, despite its strangeness (and the fact that in future years people will most likely be cringing in disbelief).

Regardless of the fans or skeptics' feelings, Lil Wayne's recent foray into the rock world, Rebirth, will be sure to make anyone recoil in disgust.  The album marks another step in Lil Wayne's pursuit of a Dylan-like legacy, but unfortunately his electric guitar could never strum the chords to another "Like a Rolling Stone."  Instead, Wayne brings listeners sloppy, auto-tuned verses mostly spoken over uninspired guitar and keyboard riffs.

"American Star" starts this mess with 80's bombast, random guitar squeals and clashing drums, and a few lethargic, auto-tuned verses.  It does not take long before the inherent problems of this project manifest: when Wayne raps, he can throw out one-liners that can shock, appall, and humor, but when he "sings" in a rock format, he is forced to be concise.  As a result, Wayne instead slugs through inane verses, avoiding the non sequiturs that makes his lyrics so appealing.

The opening song is a complete mess, with the auto-tune overtaking any semblance of Wayne's voice, although, somehow, it fails to make the track at least seem melodious.  Its successor, "Prom Queen," suffers from the same failures, as Wayne continually snarls "prom queen, prom queen" in the song's painfully irritating chorus.

The bright spots are far and few. "On Fire" eschews the rock formula, playing with incendiary synthesizers and a fire-alarm melody to create the album's standout track.  The latter half is simply Wayne doing what he does best: rap, which makes you wonder why he bothered with this whole project in the first place.

Shanell shines on the chorus of "Runnin," proving that this album can articulate some emotion vocally without computerized effects rippling through someone's voice.  Yet for any worthwhile song, there is a catastrophe or two to follow.  There is the uncomfortably abrasive "The Price is Wrong" and "Paradice," Wayne's attempt to sing a ballad, which becomes a whining narrative with an achingly melodramatic chorus. 

Wayne has shown his introspective side before on tracks like "Shoot Me Down" and "I Feel Like Dying," but this attempt, if that what it really is, is simply just embarrassing.  It is not that he is an uninteresting person; Wayne is incessantly in the media because his character is so intriguing.  However, Rebirth is devoid of any personality or enthusiasm, and consequently lacks the character of Wayne's successful albums. 

Wayne simply sounds confused, wanting to entertain his rock-n-roll alter-ego without any knowledge in how to succeed in the genre.  Given his upcoming jail sentence, this February marks a low point for Lil Wayne's career.  For a man whose success and ubiquity parallels Dylan's during his heyday, the times sure seem to be a-changin' for Lil Wayne.

User Reviews and Comments

Review:

on 2010-04-06 Jonathan_Kroening Said:

Most folks probably don't even know that Lil Wayne released a new album last month and it's definitely better it stays that way. After a hugely successful southern rap styled release in 2008, Dwayne Carter (aka Lil Wayne) thought it would be a good idea to venture into the late '90/early '00s nu metal rap-rock stylings made popular by such bands as Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. Heavily distorted guitars and bombastic rock drums littered with spoken verb, unfortunately for Mr. Wayne, is a thing of the past.

Rebirth is a boring and trite attempt to rejuvenate a sound that needed no such resuscitation. Carter was on point with his critically acclaimed release Tha Carter III and didn't require a foray into "fresh" territory. Instead the rock ventures of Rebirth sound like a bad demo tape, almost as if Lil Wayne sat down in front of his iMac and busted out some cheesy jams in Garage Band, then started rapping over them. The first version I myself heard was an advance copy and I genuinely thought that the final street release would exhibit loads of remastering and that many of the tracks would be left on the studio floor. How I wish I was right.

Peaking at #15 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first single "Prom Queen", released in January of 2009, was an early taste of what Lil Wayne's rock experimentation would sound like. That taste was all anyone needed because thirteen months later when the album finally hit stores critics across the board had already trashed the album for it's tastelessness and flat sound. As Nathan Rabin for the Onion A.V. Club put it, "Rebirth sounds like a strange dispatch from a lost 80s in which Wayne trafficked in cheesy power chords, cornball hard-rock atmospherics, lame guitar solos for beginners, rock clich?s, and Reagan-era synthesizers." Had Lil Wayne decided to limit his wanderings to a handful of experimental tracks, accenting an album filled with what he does best, rap over hip-hop beats, I might not be writing this article. Instead foolishly he based an entire album around something he clearly has little grasp of: an authentic rock sound.

Surprisingly, four tracks have broken the Billboard Hot 100, "On Fire", "Drop The World", "Knockout", and the aforementioned lead single, but with Lil Wayne's star power, radio-play is to be expected. The only song on the entire release worth mentioning is the HIT-BOY and Chase N. Cashe produced "Drop The World" which features a re-energized Eminem. Besides these four minutes of mediocrity the remaining forty-two are an awkward and embarrassing flop.

0.5 / 5 stars

- Jonathan Kroening
http://www.itsjustmusic.net
Rating: 1/10