Funeral - Lil Wayne: Review
is a name that needs no introduction at this point. One of the most influential rappers of the 2000's who continues to release solid material and is coming off of the long awaited Carter V one of his most acclaimed projects in years.
Review By Lavender:
I think I'm about as much of a fan of Lil Wayne as everybody else is. His big radio hits and hugely successful mixtapes soundtracked some of my younger years but he still manages to surprise me every once in a while with a record like The Carter V which had way more great songs than duds. Given that the record had no true singles I didn't know what to expect going into it, but at a daunting 24 tracks and 80 minutes in length the only thing definitive about Funeral is that absolutely nothing was left off of it.
The album actually gets off to a pretty hot start with its first couple tracks. Funeral is the opener and the title track where Wayne opens up with a short sung passage before the heavy beat drops out and he starts spitting some thematic bars about his own livelihood and that of others from his enemies to best friends. The second track Mahogany has a wild fun rattling beat that features some distant and distorted vocal sampling alongside Wayne's infectious energy. The hot streak continues onto Mama Mia which features some hilariously savage bars backed by a hard-hitting instrumental with shrill electronic manipulation that puts out a pretty hard banger when its all said and done.
There are a handful of other pretty fun songs in the tracklist. Dreams has another really interesting dreamy instrumental that hits pretty hard. The hook is a little bit silly at first but it grew on me and while the lyrics can be less than perfect the track does a pretty good job of sticking tightly to its lyrical concept. Bastard has another pretty tight lyrical concept about his childhood and it has an ice cold instrumental and one of the more clever hooks on the album as well. Never Mind is a cute track that sees Wayne genuinely getting personal in a way I wish he would be more often because it really pays off here. The closing track Wayne's World is a fitting end to the record that sounds like a righteous celebration after the hour plus of Wayne music you've trekked through to get here.
Another thing about this album is that its packed full of features and there are far more duds than hits, but there are some moments that shine. I Don't Sleep is a genuinely fun crossover that sees Wayne and Takeoff exchanging some fun verses. Sights And Silencers has some slick Mike Will Made It production and is totally dominated by a feature from The Dream, the exact same thing happens with XXXTENTACION on the track Get Out Of My Head. My favorite feature on the album surprisingly enough is O.T. Genesis who shows up on one of the albums best tracks T.O. Genesis and Wayne both drop firey fun verses and I love the reference to TO crying on the hook.
Unfortunately the much more often conclusion on the records features is the MC's not adding up to make a song that's greater than the sum of its parts. I Do It has a tolerable but uninspired Big Sean chorus that leads into a terrible Lil Baby feature where he does a dreadful impersonation of Wayne followed by one of Wayne's weaker performances on the record. Bing James is a track I want to like but its just so average, for a song that sees Lil Wayne and Jay Rock calling themselves kings of the rap game they should really have put out a better final product. Trust Nobody may be the worst of the bunch with an absolutely painful lead vocal from Adam Levine. It sounds like every single bad crossover of rock and pop music ever and I totally hate it. The last of the bad features comes on the track Ball Hard where Wayne drops some awful stream of consciousness bars over a generic beat before Lil Twist delivers one of the worst performances on the entire record.
Even with all those bad features tracks out of the way there is a Kanye albums worth of average to terrible songs still leftover. Clap For Em and Piano Trap both have great instrumentals but they never really amount to anything with the underwhelming performances laid over them. There are plenty of painfully average songs so mundane it is hard to even remember anything about them, like Not Me, Know You Know and Harden. The worst moments on the record come on tracks that are already inderwhelming before you even start paying attention to the lyrics and realize Wayne spent absolutely no time at all writing the tracks. Stop Playin With Me sees Wayne calling out his status in the rap game in between terrible struggle bars that should have never made it onto a record of this caliber. Wild Dogs gets it going with the awful lyrics right from the start and even though it turns a corner and gets a little better by the end of the track it isn't enough to save it. Line Em Up features an insanely average Murda Beatz instrumental and trash lyrics all over the place, the "I Am Legend, John Legend" line on the hook maybe being the albums lowest lyrical moment. Finally on Darkside Wayne gets flat out cringey as he tries to get serious but ends up doping some hilariously dumb bars all over the song that make it impossible to take seriously.
There is a good album within the tracklist of Funeral, but Funeral isn't it. The record spends as much of its time wading though bad tunes that should have never left the studio as it does with some of the album most worthwhile and fun tracks. Wayne clearly still has it but if he's gonna drop another truly great record he needs to start by whittling it down to the gems. 5/10
