Take a look back through Lil Wayne’s cross-over efforts, whether the featured artist or main artist.
Though it feels like a distant memory at this point, there was once a time when people rallied against Lil Wayne as “ruining rap,” claiming he wasn’t “real” hip-hop. Thankfully, at this point in time, it’s rare anyone disputes that the man can rap— perhaps people have finally come around to him, or perhaps rap has just changed so much in the past decade that he seems more “traditional” by comparison (likely, it’s both).
Regardless of what you think of him, Lil Wayne is undeniably one of the most influential rappers of all time— from Young Thug to Kendrick Lamar, you can hear pieces of his DNA in almost any rapper who came up in the past decade. Though Wayne is often celebrated for his influence when it comes to more freeform lyricism, something that isn’t talked about enough is his willingness to innovate in terms of genre and sound (it’s likely that Rebirth tainted people’s perception of him as an innovator in that regard).
But the deeper you delve into Wayne’s catalogue, the more you start to see that, for better or for worse, he has a storied history of genre crossovers and was making attempts and sounds and styles that wouldn’t be picked up and popularized until over a decade later.
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