Lil Wayne – “Quasimodo”

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Lil Wayne – “Quasimodo”

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

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.

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.

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