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Spending Halloween with Lil Wayne in Las Vegas | Vanity Fair
Where the prize for the sexiest costume might cover your table service bill.
by
It’s Sunday afternoon, November 1, and the line at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas seems exceptionally lengthy and sluggish under the throb of a killer hangover. All bets were off the night before, once I started slugging some sugary red swill called “Me So Horney” [SIC] from a two-foot souvenir cup shaped like a woman’s leg in fishnets. Before reaching the full-body scanner, I’m tickled to meet a kindred spirit named Exy carrying an identical plastic leg by its ankle, and offer her the pro tip that the base is removable to better fit in a carry-on bag. If you’re going to spend Halloween in Las Vegas, you might as well have something to show for it.
There’s a glut of entertainment options on the Strip every night (comedy clubs, magic shows, brooding house D.J.s, Celine Dion, eight different flavors of Cirque du Soleil), but on the weirdest and wildest holiday of the year, only one party had me at hello. Lil Wayne, the well-inked joker prince of hip-hop, was on tap to host the “Halloweezy” bash at the SLS Las Vegas hotel and casino—one of the newer joints in town, just north of the notoriously kitschy Circus Circus. Elvis may have once been the king of this town, but it’s already been three years since Lil Wayne surpassed him as the artist with the most Billboard Hot 100 hits. More than just a concert, Halloweezy also boasted a sexiest-costume contest with the promise of $50,000 in cash and prizes.
Some of my Los Angeles friends drove in for Saturday’s mayhem once word spread, which is how I found myself rolling up to the LiFE Nightclub at SLS around 11:30 P.M. with a cheerleader, a luchador, Han Solo, Ziggy Stardust, and a human taco. A publicity manager finds my motley crew and generously escorts us past the velvet ropes, but while we had been e-mailing for days about the possibility of meeting Lil Wayne himself, the last I heard was that “we will not have an update on the interview until at least midnight.” Settling in for table service behind the packed dance floor, we're flanked by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and his San Diego squad, a gaggle of barely dressed pirates, and seven dudes all dressed as the perpetually misplaced Waldo. Onstage, an emcee in a Star Trek uniform warmed up the room: “How many single females fuckin’ tonight? Don’t be shy.” Minutes later, he interrupted the D.J. spinning “Turn Down for What” to announce that the costume finalists were coming up shortly.
Photos by Jennifer Loeber.
Rather predictably, no men make it to the final round. The top 20 contestants (or so they say; I only count 14) parade for the rowdy crowd before they’re narrowed down to a sexy devil with impressive wings and stilt boots, a sexy Native American chief, a sexy unicorn, a sexy Stormtrooper, and a sexy who-knows-what with shiny white horns. The crowd loves Star Wars and barely concealed breasts, and so by the room’s applause, the Stormtrooper struts away with an oversize check for $5,000. It’s something of a cop-out, though, because it’s too dark in the club and the woman cannot walk while wearing her helmet—the only prop signifying what her costume is.
My P.R. contact texts me to say there might be time to ask one question to Lil Wayne immediately after his show, though I’m now feeling moderately. . .euphoric and no longer concerned about logistics of any kind. Weezy’s act has been pushed back to two A.M., right as the clocks are turned back, so I chat up a bottle-service hostess dressed as a Special Forces paratrooper (“I’m just a badass.”) and two helicopter pilots who both give Grand Canyon tours but didn’t arrive here together. Dean, a Montreal-based creative director for a video-game company, has never been to Vegas before but refers to it as “Disneyland with daddy issues.” He and his new wife, Angie, got married by an Elvis impersonator hours earlier and were given Halloweezy tickets as a wedding gift. The trip has exceeded their expectations, but he half-jokingly laments: “I’m not going to look at my bank account this month, that’s for sure.”
Photos by Jennifer Loeber.
The moment Lil Wayne jumps out onstage, his entourage standing tall behind him in Guy Fawkes masks, is electric. Right before he breaks into his Grammy-winning “A Milli,” a skirmish erupts on the floor and a Stormtrooper (not the contest winner) is shoved over a barricade, into the table next to us. We try to ignore him angrily peacocking and shit-talking to whomever threw him, as Weezy tears up his career-spanning set with cuts like “Go D.J.,” “I’m Goin’ In,” and his verse from Nicki Minaj’s “Truffle Butter.” Fans were especially going nuts for his freestyle remix of Drake’s recent diss track “Back to Back,” which I’m able to confirm will be released on his upcoming mixtape. Thirty-five minutes later, it was over, and I was instructed to wait in a back hallway for a super-brief encounter.
Lil Wayne and his team barrel out the club’s back exit to find me, and he laughs as he shakes my hand. It’s his fourth time performing at SLS, so I ask why he loves it here so much. “Actually, Las Vegas is the second best place to throw a party. The first best place is my house,” he says. “But the reason why is everybody knows ‘what happens here stays here.’ They sell that so much. You literally come here with that mentality, that you could do something you never imagined you’d be doing.”
And he’s exactly right. How the hell did I get here?
Where the prize for the sexiest costume might cover your table service bill.
by
It’s Sunday afternoon, November 1, and the line at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas seems exceptionally lengthy and sluggish under the throb of a killer hangover. All bets were off the night before, once I started slugging some sugary red swill called “Me So Horney” [SIC] from a two-foot souvenir cup shaped like a woman’s leg in fishnets. Before reaching the full-body scanner, I’m tickled to meet a kindred spirit named Exy carrying an identical plastic leg by its ankle, and offer her the pro tip that the base is removable to better fit in a carry-on bag. If you’re going to spend Halloween in Las Vegas, you might as well have something to show for it.
There’s a glut of entertainment options on the Strip every night (comedy clubs, magic shows, brooding house D.J.s, Celine Dion, eight different flavors of Cirque du Soleil), but on the weirdest and wildest holiday of the year, only one party had me at hello. Lil Wayne, the well-inked joker prince of hip-hop, was on tap to host the “Halloweezy” bash at the SLS Las Vegas hotel and casino—one of the newer joints in town, just north of the notoriously kitschy Circus Circus. Elvis may have once been the king of this town, but it’s already been three years since Lil Wayne surpassed him as the artist with the most Billboard Hot 100 hits. More than just a concert, Halloweezy also boasted a sexiest-costume contest with the promise of $50,000 in cash and prizes.
Some of my Los Angeles friends drove in for Saturday’s mayhem once word spread, which is how I found myself rolling up to the LiFE Nightclub at SLS around 11:30 P.M. with a cheerleader, a luchador, Han Solo, Ziggy Stardust, and a human taco. A publicity manager finds my motley crew and generously escorts us past the velvet ropes, but while we had been e-mailing for days about the possibility of meeting Lil Wayne himself, the last I heard was that “we will not have an update on the interview until at least midnight.” Settling in for table service behind the packed dance floor, we're flanked by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and his San Diego squad, a gaggle of barely dressed pirates, and seven dudes all dressed as the perpetually misplaced Waldo. Onstage, an emcee in a Star Trek uniform warmed up the room: “How many single females fuckin’ tonight? Don’t be shy.” Minutes later, he interrupted the D.J. spinning “Turn Down for What” to announce that the costume finalists were coming up shortly.
Photos by Jennifer Loeber.Rather predictably, no men make it to the final round. The top 20 contestants (or so they say; I only count 14) parade for the rowdy crowd before they’re narrowed down to a sexy devil with impressive wings and stilt boots, a sexy Native American chief, a sexy unicorn, a sexy Stormtrooper, and a sexy who-knows-what with shiny white horns. The crowd loves Star Wars and barely concealed breasts, and so by the room’s applause, the Stormtrooper struts away with an oversize check for $5,000. It’s something of a cop-out, though, because it’s too dark in the club and the woman cannot walk while wearing her helmet—the only prop signifying what her costume is.
My P.R. contact texts me to say there might be time to ask one question to Lil Wayne immediately after his show, though I’m now feeling moderately. . .euphoric and no longer concerned about logistics of any kind. Weezy’s act has been pushed back to two A.M., right as the clocks are turned back, so I chat up a bottle-service hostess dressed as a Special Forces paratrooper (“I’m just a badass.”) and two helicopter pilots who both give Grand Canyon tours but didn’t arrive here together. Dean, a Montreal-based creative director for a video-game company, has never been to Vegas before but refers to it as “Disneyland with daddy issues.” He and his new wife, Angie, got married by an Elvis impersonator hours earlier and were given Halloweezy tickets as a wedding gift. The trip has exceeded their expectations, but he half-jokingly laments: “I’m not going to look at my bank account this month, that’s for sure.”
Photos by Jennifer Loeber.The moment Lil Wayne jumps out onstage, his entourage standing tall behind him in Guy Fawkes masks, is electric. Right before he breaks into his Grammy-winning “A Milli,” a skirmish erupts on the floor and a Stormtrooper (not the contest winner) is shoved over a barricade, into the table next to us. We try to ignore him angrily peacocking and shit-talking to whomever threw him, as Weezy tears up his career-spanning set with cuts like “Go D.J.,” “I’m Goin’ In,” and his verse from Nicki Minaj’s “Truffle Butter.” Fans were especially going nuts for his freestyle remix of Drake’s recent diss track “Back to Back,” which I’m able to confirm will be released on his upcoming mixtape. Thirty-five minutes later, it was over, and I was instructed to wait in a back hallway for a super-brief encounter.
Lil Wayne and his team barrel out the club’s back exit to find me, and he laughs as he shakes my hand. It’s his fourth time performing at SLS, so I ask why he loves it here so much. “Actually, Las Vegas is the second best place to throw a party. The first best place is my house,” he says. “But the reason why is everybody knows ‘what happens here stays here.’ They sell that so much. You literally come here with that mentality, that you could do something you never imagined you’d be doing.”
And he’s exactly right. How the hell did I get here?
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