Production Breakdown: An Open Letter to Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne, we need to talk. I'm starting to think – it hurts me to say this – that you don't even know what rock music is. I'm not talking about the “spirit of rock 'n' roll” or any hippy-dippy stuff like that; I just have no idea what kind of music you're trying to make or who it's supposed to appeal to, and it doesn't seem like you have a clue either. Where did "Rebirth" go wrong ? Well, let's take a little trip down Memory Lane...

I was almost convinced that I liked “Prom Queen,” when it dropped back in January but, in retrospect, I think I was just fascinated by it in the sense that rubberneckers are fascinated by a 14-car pileup on the freeway. I mean, a gender-switched reimagining of Avril Lavigne's “Sk8r Boi” backed by System of a Down-lite metal riffage? Weezy as a 27-year-old, bespectacled high-school outcast? “I loved her fancy underwear?!”That's not a rock record, that's a fever dream. The follow-up single, “Hot Revolver,” was apparently so poorly-received that it's been left off the final tracklist (because the rest of your material was so much stronger?), but you know what? I liked it. People seemed to think you were aping Green Day, but it actually sounded more like a hip-hop track by post-punk-popsters The Cars (you know, these guys) – it was like ordering a cheeseburger from McDonalds and inexplicably receiving a halfway-decent Porterhouse steak. Unfortunately, things only went downhill from there.

Fast-forward to December 3, and you unleash “On Fire” upon the world. Which is basically you spouting Auto-Tuned nonsense over a ramshackle reimagining of that one song from Scarface. Awful? Sure, but it was nothing compared to the splash of technicolor vomit you disgorged a few days later. Our own Nathan S., as well as Booth reader reviewers, have said all there is to say about “Da Da Da,” a garbled pop-rap-dance-whatever mess. This is not only not rock, it's also only loosely describable as a song

Considering you've been struggling to get The Rebirth, your “rock debut,” onto store shelves for pretty much the whole year (it was just pushed back, again, to February 1 of next year), it may sound like I'm beating a dead horse. What gets me, though, is that the project didn't have to be horrible. You could have taken the Ghostdeini route, concentrating on your strengths (rapping, lyrics) and enlisting some of rock's best and brightest to take care of the rest. I bet you could have done those Blacrok folks one better. Hell, you could even have picked up an acoustic guitar, strummed a few open chords, and written a couple simple, catchy tunes. It's not that hard.

Or you could just roll with the idea that “rock” is anything with an ugly, overdriven riff or two, and release what is bound to be one of the most ridiculous vanity projects in pop history. And, you know what? I'll buy that. I'll buy it, listen to it once or twice for a laugh, and then stash it away in a safety deposit box somewhere. Years down the line, when my grandchildren ask me what life in the early 2000s was like, I'll tell them in my scariest old-man voice, “Well, America was embroiled in two endless wars, nobody I knew could get a job, and all music sounded like this!!” Then I'll cue up “Da Da Da” on my antique CD player and cackle diabolically as I watch the blood drain from their faces.

Yeah, I'll be a terrible grandparent.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Fan