Top 25 Hip-Hop Songs of the 2000s: #6 Lil Wayne “A Milli”

With the number 6 pick of our "Top 25 of the 2000s" countdown, RefinedHype.com and DJBooth.net are proud to select...Lil Wayne's "A Milli"!

Hip-hop has never seen or heard a rapper like Lil Wayne, and it never will again. An at times insanely creative yet commercially successful rapper who puts out music at an astounding rate, in 2008 Weezy was poised to take over the world with his heavily anticipated album "Tha Carter III", and that anticipation was due in no small part to "A Milli", a mixtape-esque track that shockingly crossed over into the mainstream, peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts and garnered Weezy a Grammy. It's Weezy F. Baby, and don't forget the F baby.



Here's the case for "A Milli", as if I need to make it. Sure "Lollipop" was a bigger hit in the commercial sense, but in many ways "A Milli" was much more of an achievement. "A Milli" was a raw, unadulterated, sometimes incomprehensible look at Weezy the rapper, a track that would normally be reserved for a mixtape but stunningly found its way onto radio and even the Grammy stage despite having no real hook, an off-center beat and lyrics comparing car doors to pussy lips. Wayne willed this track to its enormity through the sheer force of his will, his oversized personality and supremely original rhymes. If a foreign exchange student who had never heard of Wayne was visiting and asked what Weezy sounded like, this is the track you'd play them

Now, more controversially, here's the case for keeping it out of the top 5. In and of itself, "A Milli" is not that good of a song. It's dope, but it's really just a great mixtape cut. So how do I explain its popularity? Like this: It's hard to describe how big the buzz was surrounding Wayne in 2008. Forget 50, forget Jay, "Tha Carter III" was the most highly anticipated album of my lifetime, so when "A Milli" dropped the country collectively poured all that anticipation into the song, holding it up as a justification for the incredible hype. To put it another way, was Jordan's final shot over Byron Russell to win Game 6 of the '98 Finals that great of a shot? No, but coming in such a high pressure situation, from a man we all expected greatness from, it just feels more incredible. Even if Jordan hit about 100 tougher shots over the span of his career, this is the one that will always stick in the public's collective consciousness. So Weezy is Jordan and "A Milli" is that shot. There, there's nothing a good sports analogy can't explain.

For a complete list of the Top 25 picks so far click here.

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