Original image of A Child’s Garden of Verses by There Stands the Glass.
I almost shed a tear when I heard the all-too-familiar click of a lighter in the opening moments of No Ceilings a few days ago. The partial re-release of Lil Wayne’s woefully inferior 2009 mixtape documents the precipitous erosion of creativity caused in part by the activities implied by the embarrassing sound effect. Lil Wayne was the most important rapper alive 15 years ago. I reveled in Tunechi’s dominance from the first time I heard “The Block is Hot” in 1999 through 2008’s Tha Carter III. Heavy rotation of the riveting video for "A Milli" may even have been the pivotal factor allowing hip-hop to overtake pop as the most dominant strain of popular music. It’s impossible to stay on top forever, but Mr. Carter’s nearly instantaneous descent into mediocrity was particularly jarring. He fires off a handful of good verses amid the revolting gynecology punchlines on the drab No Ceilings, but the subpar production is depressing. Weezy is only 37, so there’s still a possibility he’ll recover from his lengthy artistic funk. No matter what happens, I’ll always love him.