CD REVIEW: Lil Wayne - Rebirth

Lil Wayne should have never given birth to this mess.
Rating: * out of *****

Lil Wayne has outdone himself this time. Not only did the rapper best known for auto tune drenched club numbers such as “Lollipop” and “Got Money” make what is likely to be the worst CD of 2010 with Rebirth – he also may have made one of the worst rock albums of all time.

After numerous delays, one can only wonder why no one told Lil Wayne this whole thing was a bad idea. The producer of this album must be getting a huge chunk of change have his name associated with this abomination, because even all of the production tricks in the world cannot save it.

First off, Lil Wayne can’t sing. All of his vocals on the album are either heavily distorted, loaded with auto tune effects, or a combination of both. Sure there are plenty of rock musicians that get away without being able to really sing, but this is terrible. If his voice sounds like this after studio-magic is applied, then it’s even harder to imagine Lil Wayne being able to pull off any of these songs live.

As far as actual songwriting goes, the lyrics to the tracks “American Star” and “Da Da Da” read like something found scribbled in a wannabe rapper’s high school notebook.

And if the poor vocal performance wasn’t enough, Rebirth is full of riffs that sound like they were regurgitated from the blandest of ‘90s rock acts (“Get a Life” is basically dumbed-down ska and “Knockout” sounds like uninspired Blink 182). With the critical acclaim and riches that followed Tha Carter III, you would think Lil Wayne could afford some top-notch session guitarists.

So after all of this bitching, you may ask, why give any stars to such a bad record? Well, it takes balls to try something new in the world of popular music, and for that, Lil Wayne deserves some credit.

However, instead of trying to sing, maybe he should have thought about bringing in guest musicians to rap with, à la rock collaborations of old, such as Run D.M.C. and Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” or Public Enemy and Anthrax’s “Bring the Noise.” This would have made for a more unique listening experience and it would be cool to see artists who can actually write rock riffs and sing work with the rapper (it’s not that far out there to imagine this happening, when a guitarist like Slash is performing with Fergie on tour).

Lil Wayne even went as far to get the members of KoЯn to appear in the music video for the laughable first-single, “Prom Queen,” so why couldn’t he get them to contribute to one of the songs on the album? Even though KoЯn’s relevance in the current music scene is questionable, it seems like the band would be a good fit for the rapper’s over-the-top style (and frontman Jonathan Davis even recorded a cover of a Lil Wayne’s “Got Money”).

Maybe it’s a good thing that Lil Wayne will be spending some time in jail on gun possession charges – the rapper will be able to reflect on what went wrong with Rebirth and start thinking about what he can do on Tha Carter IV to make up for this mess.