MOUNT ZION
“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time”
― Henry Ford
What’s difficult about your life changing is that it’s changing. You aren’t able to understand what’s about to happen next because you are no longer in a state where things are familiar.
Once everything becomes new, you have to deal with that newness as it's happening. You also have to accept that you aren’t the same person. To be an artist of any kind is to create from this constant position of arriving and departing.
“Please don’t speak to me like Drake from four years ago, I’m at a higher place,” is my favorite rap line that articulates how transformative change isn’t always recognized. Some eyes will only see who you were, not who you’re becoming, or who you’ve become.
I didn’t know who Lil Wayne was when he released his sixth studio album, Tha Carter III, on June 10th, 2008. This was not the same rapper who released the classic 2005 mixtape, Tha Dedication II, followed by another classic mixtape, Tha Drought 3.
Free mixtapes, back then, were status symbols of underground excellence. They weren’t curated to be played on radio or sold as ringtones, but freestyles made to create ripples away from mainstream attention.
Something about jacking-for-beat mixtapes seemed unlawful, like these artists stole commercial songs to create better versions just for their fans. Wayne was the best at these Robin Hood robberies. A rhyming solar flare that decimated whatever hot record that was on the radio.
Naively, I thought he would remain beneath the noses of popular music, content with only devouring hits, not making them. Then he released “Lollipop” as Tha Carter III’s first official single. I hated the sugary attempt at a radio song. It was nothing like the mixtape lyricist who proclaimed himself to be the best rapper alive.
Took me several weeks before I understood what “Lollipop” represented: A necessary compromise to reach superstardom. Wayne showed us to accelerate and ascend to higher plateaus change is required. He had to become a larger entity.
I’m currently packing for my first adult trip to New Orleans as we prepare to release our third Rap Portrait. Lil Wayne is on my mind. I’m headed to his home state. Where he learned to become a man, but leaving is when he transcended to that next level. I’m hoping every time I leave Atlanta, I gain from the experiences what will assist me in arriving at a new frontier.
May we all arrive at higher places and never be afraid to depart from our former selves. Safe travels to the cars on the road, the planes in the sky, and the artist working in bedrooms and studios trying to crack the very code that took Lil Wayne from a Hot Boy to a million-album selling martian.