Things have been awfully shaky for Lil Wayne lately. He's been in a years-long legal dispute with Cash Money, his old record label, which shelved his album Tha Carter V years ago. Tha Carter III, Wayne's commercial-peak album, is now a decade old. He's taken to cancelling festival appearances at the last moment. But now a couple of generations of young rappers have taken Wayne's influence and run with it; he remains probably the most influential rapper of this century. And now it looks like he's ready to get back to consistently releasing music.
According to Complex, Wayne recently told a Miami crowd, "Just to let y’all know I had a meeting today. It wasn’t a long meeting. Just so y’all know the meeting was about the release date of Tha Carter fucking V." And now there's a new Wayne song out in the world.
The mixtape site DatPiff shared the new track "Quasimodo" last night. We probably shouldn't take it as a single. It's entirely possible that it's just some leaked track from a recording session, one that was never supposed to see release. But it's pretty good! The moody and meditative track finds Wayne in his singsong-mumble zone, and none of this lines are peak-Wayne punchlines. But even on autopilot, the insular version of Wayne fits into today's rap landscape pretty well. Check it out below.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XvF5uGMMk2k
It will be fascinating to see if Tha Carter V ever comes out, and if the version that comes out is the version Wayne recorded back in 2013.
