Lil' Wayne as a Cultural Phenomenon: Reviewed by Davis Rivera

In the past few years there has been one person who has seen their star rise to such an unparalleled height that they’ve acquired a not-so-obnoxious pun on a great comedy that is ubiquitously used in conjunction with their name whenever it appears in print. This person has single-handedly taken the once vastly underappreciated art form known as the music video from a looked down upon thoughtless way of proselytizing the brain dead American public into buying the newest and flashiest product to a condensed blast of atomic cinematic beauty that until recently had been toyed around with and labeled as a “vignette” to alleviate the targeted demographics’ disgust by using a French word, often being forced together in an attempt to pass off the product as a full-length film, as in the case of Angus Andrew and the Liars’ “Drum’s Not Bread.” The man solely responsible for this revolution also happens to be America’s biggest star, the CEO/founder of Young Money Records, the president of Cash Money Records, and the self-proclaimed “greatest rapper alive” Weezy F. Baby A.K.A. Lil’ Wayne.

For audiences of all ages, Wayne’s name is synonymous with his hometown of New Orleans, the glorification of money, an Apollonian head of flowing dreadlocks, and the finest wordplay that has been heard in rap since the days of Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash. Although he has released only a handful of albums, Wayne has become such a pervasive component of American popular culture that, without a doubt, many who have not heard one of his albums or seen one of his videos have some sense of Wayne’s magnetic persona. As anyone who owns a printed copy of a film still from the iconic opening scene of Wayne’s “Lollipop” video can attest, audiences do not just appreciate a star’s performance onscreen; they also consume the public image that a star gradually acquires over the course of a career. Fans are so drawn to these larger-than-life figures that they imitate the attire and mannerisms of their favorite stars, they scour gossip magazines looking for them, and they can even vote them into political office.

All one has to do to notice this fact is step outside and become immediately aware of Wayne’s imminence in the cinematic and music world. Everywhere one looks there will be a man or woman fully equipped with dreadlocks, a mouth shining vibrantly thanks to a recently acquired grill, and a wardrobe rich with ostentatious colors straight out of a production of Gilbert and Sullivan yet, due to Wayne’s magnetic persona previously mentioned, somehow made trendy and worthy of being resurrected in the early 21st century. Letting one regain their senses, the next step would be to notice the way they carry themselves and, again, be transported into the world of Wayne and his dedicated sense of himself. Not since Mick Jagger has there been a star more self-assured and swaggering than Wayne and this attests to the few or, more likely, none that can pull off the boldness of Wayne due to a mixture of self-consciousness and a misunderstanding of Wayne’s reinventing himself, not recapturing himself. A topical example of this is immediately after being sued by the Rolling Stones for appropriating a riff from one of their songs to use on Tha Carter III highlight “Playing with Fire” Wayne retaliated by collaborating with some of the biggest stars in the music and cinematic world for a track titled “Swagga Like Us,” a worthy title and perhaps a jab at Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, the acknowledged predecessor of Wayne in the swagger department. While Wayne doesn’t yet have the showmanship or the reputation of Jagger, it is admirable that he is willing to take on the titan of vivacity in a gesture that can only be interpreted as a desperate attempt to receive the torch.

Whether Jagger is willing to give up the torch or not, it does not matter for Wayne possesses a publicly acknowledged magnetism that lures audiences to watch his videos or buy his records and lingers in viewers’ memories after the video or the album ends. In most cases studio heads, talent agencies, publicity outlets, and the stars themselves carefully cultivate the public’s admiration, but not Wayne. Wayne’s magnetism is so great that, in the opening track “3 Peat” from his album Tha Carter III, Wayne can mention going into someone’s house and “shooting their grandmother up” and still go on to sell over a million copies in his first week, fittingly prophesized by Wayne in another Carter highlight, “A Milli.” Wayne’s versatility as a film and music star is so great that the groundbreaking recurrence heard throughout “A Milli” was later remixed, with Wayne’s approval, and used by famed producer Diplo to rally people to vote for Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. It shows the kind of humbleness exhibited by Wayne that he was more than willing to allow this free usage of his Grammy-nominated song to further the career of another charismatic figure, instead of using it to his advantage to take on the benefactor in his own quest for political power (which he has made reference to on several occasions, most notably the opening line of his 2008 hit “I’m Me”). Another less altruistic aspect of a star’s appeal is, quite obviously, his performance on screen. Why are audiences still mesmerized by Wayne (and not, one might add, Birdman) in “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy”? Why did fans suddenly scour the Internet for pictures of Wayne after seeing his performance in “We Takin’ Over”? Rather than attributing a star’s appeal to an enigmatic, indefinable talent, film scholars are interested in trying to explain what makes a particular performance memorable. As all of Wayne’s performances could be considered memorable, one has to pay close attention to other elements of mise-en-scène and cinematography to understand why any variation of shots or order will inevitably complement Wayne’s physical presence.

In his 2005 video “Fireman,” Wayne begins the video by having Birdman attempt to ignite a lighter in a clever diegetic scene that syncs beautifully into an explosion of fire that produces meaning at an abstract level (which Wayne will later reference in the first verse of the song), defies audience expectations, and creates a visual association with the song’s subject matter. That he was willing to give this scene to his mentor is another example, like the Obama example mentioned above, of Wayne allowing his friends and allies to have their own share of the spotlight he will regain seconds later. Indeed, seconds later, Wayne is seen in a long-shot walking through a hallway in a scene reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic big wheel sequence in “The Shining.” Though, instead of running into a pair of twins whose images are spliced with their unfortunate death, the director ingeniously posits Wayne amongst a barrage of women handing him wads of money and throwing knowing glances his way, paying tribute to the numerous instances of Wayne’s own prophetic visions and also enacting them before they happen. This kind of camera trickery is now common, as seen in the new David Fincher film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” but was done first and most effectively by Wayne. This is often skipped over by critics when evaluating the artistic life of Wayne, but the attentive will remember where the music video world was at the time this classic early video of Wayne’s was released and how easy it is to forget past groundbreaking events due to this being Wayne’s forte in our current day.

This kind of star discourse circulating through criticism and commentaries has proven to be both good and bad for Wayne. Critics evaluate and study a star’s work, either contemporaneously or posthumously, in popular reviews in magazines, newspapers, television, radio, fan websites and “blogs” on the Internet, and academic research. Film and music criticism can play a crucial role in determining a star’s persona, either by reflecting public sentiment or by shaping public opinion. Before the release of Wayne’s album Tha Carter II and his subsequent “Fireman” video, he was labeled as one of the weaker members of the Cash Money family who mugged for the camera and already contributed all he would ever be capable of by introducing the phrase “drop it like it’s hot” to the rap world. After the release of these two milestones, critics and the public began to take Wayne a little more seriously. Wayne, the adroit being that he is, probably read the glowing portions of the reviews devoted to his non-sequiturs, garbled vocal delivery, and impeccable timing and decided that he could effectively turn this into a persona that audiences could come to recognize as the star’s signature. With this in mind, Wayne embarked on a mission so ambitious that one can only wonder how he avoided vertigo. First came Like Father, Like Son then a seemingly never-ending series of mixtapes which included highlights such as Dedication 2, Da Drought 3, and The Drought is Over 5, followed by appearances in some of the biggest (and frequently the best) songs, films, television shows, and videos of the past half dozen years such as “Gimme That,” “Make It Rain,” “Hello Brooklyn 2.0”, and “The Boondocks” all culminating in Vibe magazine dedicating an entire section to Wayne titled “The 77 Best Lil’ Wayne Songs of the Year” and MTV, GQ, The New Yorker, Blender, Pitchfork Media, Rolling Stone, and countless other publications calling Wayne the best rapper alive and one of the most innovative and tireless artists working in the video field. Never one to pass up an opportunity, Wayne seized on this moment to seek out Adam Bhala Lough, one of his peers in the film world, to document this meteoric rise that will debut as the documentary “The Carter” at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2009.

This essay has focused on what is, to many viewers, the most immediately visible and emotionally compelling element of a film or video: its star. It has emphasized that when audiences pay attention to a star, they watch more than a performance – they see acting technique, an accumulation of onscreen and offscreen roles that the artist has attempted, and the market force of that star’s persona. Stars’ ability to hold audiences in their sway underscores the power of celebrity as a cultural and economic institution. Lil’ Wayne is a new star, granted, but his ability to morph the wordplay of Van Dyke Parks, the street credibility of the RZA, the commerciality of Marvin Gaye, the artistic credibility of David Byrne, and the ability to reinvent himself on par with Madonna, assures the appreciators of his film, video, and music that Wayne is not, as New York Times film critic A.O. Scott predicted, someone who will have trouble cultivating a lasting persona in a contemporary culture that is awash in more celebrities than it knows what to do with, but will instead remain the multiple medium innovator he is today and age gracefully as a progenitor of many things but, perhaps most importantly, a pioneer of music video.