Rebirth.

[Proof]

Re: Rebirth.

It's OK imo pretty much same deal for IANAHB, not horrible albums just nothing too special

i actually kinda liked prom queen, dont really ever listen to it but still

[wayniac number1]

Re: Rebirth.

No lie, I was more satisfied with Rebirth than C4

and I was more hyped for Rebirth too

that shit is true and sad

[mode]

Re: Rebirth.

this is a really interesting take on rebirth.

it really does sound about right tho.

so anyway, in thinking about bands and records that suck, i kept coming back to one of the worst records i could think of: Rebirth by Lil Wayne, you know, the unheralded and dismissed “rock” record that Lil Wayne made before he went to jail. pitchfork gave it a charitable 4.5 i think, and the review had a tone of understanding, rather than the “this is fucking retarded, let’s laugh at it” review that a lot of other critics greeted Rebirth with. it has a 37% on metacritic, where you can find 20 critics gleefully trying their hand at capturing what exactly is so odious about Rebirth. to paraphrase some extant thought on Rebirth: if you thought Dedication 3 was bad, Rebirth is a comparative blood fart, it’s a miscarriage in 12 tracks, it’s the worst instincts of a man who nobody can say No to run amok, it’s Chinese Democracy but released expediently.
and i thought about trying to write something in defense of Rebirth, so i put it on and started listening to it, and, in short, i found it exactly as horrific as the reviews (and perhaps your own experience listening to it) indicate that it is, and i gave up on my quest to find something worthwhile in it.
but then i was thinking about Rebirth again when me and Joe were sitting in a coffee shop on saturday afternoon talking about the Drake record and Joe said he’s hearing something in the Drake record that he has never heard in rap before, and he’s listening to the Drake record for a reason that he’s never listened to rap before. i think what he’s talking about is Drake’s mix of confidence and vulnerability, of proudly displaying all the chinks in his armor, and Joe was talking about how there’s a double standard for rap in which it’s pussy to explore your vulnerabilities and soft spots, and that people believe rap should be fun more and sad less, which i guess is unfortunately expressed in my writing about Drake from last thursday. talking about that kinda turned me around on Rebirth.

but i’m not the only one who limits rap this way: obviously Lil Wayne does too, or else he wouldn’t have felt the need to channel the anguish of fame and the agony of loss and loneliness out of rap and into “rock” you know? Rebirth is evidence that Wayne has deemed rap an unsuitable form in which to OPENLY and THOROUGHLY air out his isolation, his concerns that people use him, his fear that he has nothing, his desire to see himself in the tradition of something emotionally “deeper” and more “tortured” than rap could be. obviously if you’re the type of person to read this blog and listen to rap you know it’s every bit as capable a vehicle as “rock” for expressing suffering and fear and loss, but for Wayne, who primarily associates “rock” with Kurt Cobain and My Chemical Romance that are, to him, icons of tortured existences spoken in the language of rock, Rebirth becomes more understandable. for Wayne, Rebirth is not about rockstar glory but about rockstar agony.

i think the reception of Rebirth, including my own reception of it, was colored by that same double standard against rappers openly exploring their tortured existences (as opposed to unwittingly exploring their tortured existences, like on the new cam’ron record when he says “grandma was ‘mom’ / called mom by her first name / why the hell you think i stay up in the third lane / gettin head from a chicken / i call it bird brain” which is roughly summed up as “my fucked up relationship with my mom is why i love making women whores”), and Rebirth’s vulnerability is cloaked in ANGER and frustration and resentment, which Wayne could only color with the least fashionable modern rock signifiers. he doesn’t write for pitchfork you know?

a bit of Rebirth is Wayne expressing his Michael Jackson complex: Wayne’s been rapping since he was 12, had a kid when he was 15, and in Prom Queen you can hear him going back to recapture a High School experience he never had, just like Michael Jackson recreated a childhood fantasy world to try to finally live his lost childhood. the difference is that Wayne was put under the spotlight as a young teenager and Michael Jackson was forced onto stages much earlier than that, like at age five. really it seems like they’re both trying to pick up where they left off in their pre-fame lives…

Rebirth is uncomfortable to listen to because it’s so angry: he tells listeners “I’MMA PICK THE WORLD UP AND I’MMA DROP IT ON YOUR FUCKING HEAD”, he screams and yowls and you know it’s burning in his throat, he goes through moments of despair like “it’s like i have it all, but what’s it all worth?” in recognizing that no matter how successful he is, it feels empty, “i should cherish life but this ain’t paradise,” he calls himself a loser, a chorus begs “WHEN’S IT GONNA END??” and another one, “LET’S JUMP OUT A WINDOW, LET’S JUMP OFF A BUILDING” and then on record’s centerpiece, Wayne hits rock bottom: “I search but never find / hurt but never cry / I WORK AND FOREVER TRY BUT I’M CURSED SO NEVERMIND”

Rebirth is gut-wrenching if you take it seriously instead of laughing it off, it’s the saddest record Wayne could have made. i think its closest antecedent in Wayne’s catalogue is I Feel Like Dying, but the pain Wayne embodies in that song is drug-induced, and there’s an inherent way out of that, you know, quitting drugs. Rebirth’s pain is existential, entrapping, unending, and that’s the saddest part about the whole thing

in the Lil Wayne documentary The Carter, which was made at a time when he was making and thinking about Rebirth, Wayne is painted as lonely, fucked up, aloof, defiantly drug-addled, and awkward. his relationships seem hollow to non-existent (except with his daughter), and Rebirth comes out of what must have been an unbearable time. it’s his reaction to everyone expecting and NEEDING him to be cheerful and wacky and flamboyant when all he wants to do is scream. and if you’ve ever had to pretend nothing’s wrong after your girlfriend broke up with you, or your bike got stolen and you wanted to cry but you were hanging out with your friends and didn’t wanna be a downer, you can understand Rebirth. imagine the pressure on a dude who’s expected to sell more records than anyone else, to constantly be topping his earlier unfathomable successes, and how satisfying it must have been to make a fuck the world, fuck the industry, fuck my life record like Rebirth as a reaction to that pressure, knowing it wouldn’t sell and going off to jail with a middle finger in the air. kind of a rock n roll think to do right?
how can a critic devalue something like that? how can someone say someone else’s self-expression “sucks”?

if you can find something worthwhile in a record as loathed as Rebirth, past however uncool it is, there’s a future reward in that too — in one of Nitsuh Abebe’s Why We Fight columns he writes about stuff that used to sound corny sounding fresh again, and stuff that used to sound fresh sounding corny. i bet sometime soon, some forward-thinking indie band will make a record that uses the same rock signifiers and effects as Rebirth, the Godsmack drum fills and Three Doors Down guitar solos and Nickleback production and Fall Out Boy’s sense of lyrical subtlty, but it’ll be a little off-kilter, and it’ll get Best New Music because it’s risky and no one will have yet repurposed those signifiers to hip ends (in the way that Kurt Cobain famously repurposed hair metal’s volume and aggression to his own ends, here’s hoping some kids blow Nickleback out of the water in a similar way you know?), and people will download it and comment on Brooklynvegan saying “damn this is a fucking revelation” but you will have given Rebirth a chance and so it won’t be such a revelation to you, and that’s what makes you cool

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews, what it might mean when you are hearing music as BAD and a defense of Rebirth

[Twiggz]

Re: Rebirth.

"Listenin to my voice, in my black Royles Royce, with any girl of my choice...."

I'm a dope boy with a guitar

[shbasketball12]

Re: Rebirth.

Its really not that bad. I dont understand the hate.

[Caninho]

Re: Rebirth.

this is a really interesting take on rebirth.

it really does sound about right tho.

so anyway, in thinking about bands and records that suck, i kept coming back to one of the worst records i could think of: Rebirth by Lil Wayne, you know, the unheralded and dismissed “rock” record that Lil Wayne made before he went to jail. pitchfork gave it a charitable 4.5 i think, and the review had a tone of understanding, rather than the “this is fucking retarded, let’s laugh at it” review that a lot of other critics greeted Rebirth with. it has a 37% on metacritic, where you can find 20 critics gleefully trying their hand at capturing what exactly is so odious about Rebirth. to paraphrase some extant thought on Rebirth: if you thought Dedication 3 was bad, Rebirth is a comparative blood fart, it’s a miscarriage in 12 tracks, it’s the worst instincts of a man who nobody can say No to run amok, it’s Chinese Democracy but released expediently.
and i thought about trying to write something in defense of Rebirth, so i put it on and started listening to it, and, in short, i found it exactly as horrific as the reviews (and perhaps your own experience listening to it) indicate that it is, and i gave up on my quest to find something worthwhile in it.
but then i was thinking about Rebirth again when me and Joe were sitting in a coffee shop on saturday afternoon talking about the Drake record and Joe said he’s hearing something in the Drake record that he has never heard in rap before, and he’s listening to the Drake record for a reason that he’s never listened to rap before. i think what he’s talking about is Drake’s mix of confidence and vulnerability, of proudly displaying all the chinks in his armor, and Joe was talking about how there’s a double standard for rap in which it’s pussy to explore your vulnerabilities and soft spots, and that people believe rap should be fun more and sad less, which i guess is unfortunately expressed in my writing about Drake from last thursday. talking about that kinda turned me around on Rebirth.

but i’m not the only one who limits rap this way: obviously Lil Wayne does too, or else he wouldn’t have felt the need to channel the anguish of fame and the agony of loss and loneliness out of rap and into “rock” you know? Rebirth is evidence that Wayne has deemed rap an unsuitable form in which to OPENLY and THOROUGHLY air out his isolation, his concerns that people use him, his fear that he has nothing, his desire to see himself in the tradition of something emotionally “deeper” and more “tortured” than rap could be. obviously if you’re the type of person to read this blog and listen to rap you know it’s every bit as capable a vehicle as “rock” for expressing suffering and fear and loss, but for Wayne, who primarily associates “rock” with Kurt Cobain and My Chemical Romance that are, to him, icons of tortured existences spoken in the language of rock, Rebirth becomes more understandable. for Wayne, Rebirth is not about rockstar glory but about rockstar agony.

i think the reception of Rebirth, including my own reception of it, was colored by that same double standard against rappers openly exploring their tortured existences (as opposed to unwittingly exploring their tortured existences, like on the new cam’ron record when he says “grandma was ‘mom’ / called mom by her first name / why the hell you think i stay up in the third lane / gettin head from a chicken / i call it bird brain” which is roughly summed up as “my fucked up relationship with my mom is why i love making women whores”), and Rebirth’s vulnerability is cloaked in ANGER and frustration and resentment, which Wayne could only color with the least fashionable modern rock signifiers. he doesn’t write for pitchfork you know?

a bit of Rebirth is Wayne expressing his Michael Jackson complex: Wayne’s been rapping since he was 12, had a kid when he was 15, and in Prom Queen you can hear him going back to recapture a High School experience he never had, just like Michael Jackson recreated a childhood fantasy world to try to finally live his lost childhood. the difference is that Wayne was put under the spotlight as a young teenager and Michael Jackson was forced onto stages much earlier than that, like at age five. really it seems like they’re both trying to pick up where they left off in their pre-fame lives…

Rebirth is uncomfortable to listen to because it’s so angry: he tells listeners “I’MMA PICK THE WORLD UP AND I’MMA DROP IT ON YOUR FUCKING HEAD”, he screams and yowls and you know it’s burning in his throat, he goes through moments of despair like “it’s like i have it all, but what’s it all worth?” in recognizing that no matter how successful he is, it feels empty, “i should cherish life but this ain’t paradise,” he calls himself a loser, a chorus begs “WHEN’S IT GONNA END??” and another one, “LET’S JUMP OUT A WINDOW, LET’S JUMP OFF A BUILDING” and then on record’s centerpiece, Wayne hits rock bottom: “I search but never find / hurt but never cry / I WORK AND FOREVER TRY BUT I’M CURSED SO NEVERMIND”

Rebirth is gut-wrenching if you take it seriously instead of laughing it off, it’s the saddest record Wayne could have made. i think its closest antecedent in Wayne’s catalogue is I Feel Like Dying, but the pain Wayne embodies in that song is drug-induced, and there’s an inherent way out of that, you know, quitting drugs. Rebirth’s pain is existential, entrapping, unending, and that’s the saddest part about the whole thing

in the Lil Wayne documentary The Carter, which was made at a time when he was making and thinking about Rebirth, Wayne is painted as lonely, fucked up, aloof, defiantly drug-addled, and awkward. his relationships seem hollow to non-existent (except with his daughter), and Rebirth comes out of what must have been an unbearable time. it’s his reaction to everyone expecting and NEEDING him to be cheerful and wacky and flamboyant when all he wants to do is scream. and if you’ve ever had to pretend nothing’s wrong after your girlfriend broke up with you, or your bike got stolen and you wanted to cry but you were hanging out with your friends and didn’t wanna be a downer, you can understand Rebirth. imagine the pressure on a dude who’s expected to sell more records than anyone else, to constantly be topping his earlier unfathomable successes, and how satisfying it must have been to make a fuck the world, fuck the industry, fuck my life record like Rebirth as a reaction to that pressure, knowing it wouldn’t sell and going off to jail with a middle finger in the air. kind of a rock n roll think to do right?
how can a critic devalue something like that? how can someone say someone else’s self-expression “sucks”?

if you can find something worthwhile in a record as loathed as Rebirth, past however uncool it is, there’s a future reward in that too — in one of Nitsuh Abebe’s Why We Fight columns he writes about stuff that used to sound corny sounding fresh again, and stuff that used to sound fresh sounding corny. i bet sometime soon, some forward-thinking indie band will make a record that uses the same rock signifiers and effects as Rebirth, the Godsmack drum fills and Three Doors Down guitar solos and Nickleback production and Fall Out Boy’s sense of lyrical subtlty, but it’ll be a little off-kilter, and it’ll get Best New Music because it’s risky and no one will have yet repurposed those signifiers to hip ends (in the way that Kurt Cobain famously repurposed hair metal’s volume and aggression to his own ends, here’s hoping some kids blow Nickleback out of the water in a similar way you know?), and people will download it and comment on Brooklynvegan saying “damn this is a fucking revelation” but you will have given Rebirth a chance and so it won’t be such a revelation to you, and that’s what makes you cool

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews, what it might mean when you are hearing music as BAD and a defense of Rebirth

good read !

[TyIquan]

Re: Rebirth.

yeah, mode says a lot of good shit.

And often times, it can be a lot.

Dunno why his rep is so low.