AOTW: Lil' Wayne - "No Ceilings"

Over Halloween, Lil' Wayne dropped his latest mixtape, the interestingly-named No Ceilings. We promised a review of the album when it came out, and after a couple weeks of listening and digesting (and, if Wayne was in charge, "shitting"), we can confidently offer an eloquent review: [siiigggghhhhhh].

It's not that Weezy doesn't absolutely murder a few of the tracks on this mixtape. He does. His reinterpretations of "Swag Surfin'" and "Run This Town" are inspired. He takes an incredibly dumb song with an incredibly sparse beat ("Ice Cream Paint Job") and does the unthinkible: he makes it exciting. Even "I Gotta Feeling," which is the exact opposite of a song I would expect Wayne to tackle on a mixtape, ends up being a fun and breezy finale to an overall very solid mixtape.

But more than anything else, it leaves the listener wanting. Maybe "pining" is a better word. Because he's done this all so much better before. In mixtape form (Dedication 2, Da Drought 3) and as a proper release (the sure-to-be-classic Tha Carter III): we know he's a martian, but the explanations are worse; he has an obsession with "being the shit" analogies, but they sound forced and tired (constipated?). And although No Ceilings far outshines his most recent releases, that sort of relativistic praise is deceiving. To borrow a phrase from an old employer, we need to "maintain high expectations" for Lil' Wayne. Pitchfork reviewed the album today and made some good points, but one was especially salient: that no current rapper may have a higher ceiling (oooohhh, the mixtape title!) or a lower floor (see: prison sentence, "rock" album). And although No Ceilings would fall on the "great" side of the see-saw, it's not at the very end. By moving a little closer to the middle, it works to offset some of the current affairs weighing down the "terrible" side... enough of a reminder that Lil' Wayne is an incredibly gifted rapper, but not enough to make us think he isn't falling down a few floors.