Brian Duricy - Tha Carter VI Leaks: Young Thug's Homage or Heresy? lyrics

Lil Wayne’s reign as hip-hop’s king in the mid-2000s resulted from the way many governmental monarchs achieved power: by taking over rival lands. Mixtape after mixtape, Wayne decimated the careers of artists who hopped on the charts with one or two club-ready songs, repurposing the beats to become something altogether Weezyan. For every “Swag Surfin’” ma**acre, he achieved two goals: the exaltation of his own craft and the devaluation of the craft of others. He, in a Nietzschean sense, transvaluated the values of these songs; we initially thought of them as belonging to one artist, proselytizing one message, but then his superior lyrical prowess revaluated them and brought a new sense to the referents of these beats. It’s difficult to hear the beat initially used for “Shoulder Lean” without instead rapping “Live from the five-hundred-and-four / It’s Mr. Crazy Flow!”, and so on. The statement has clearly been made when this happens, but Lil Wayne only succeeded in transvaluating the beats of radio-friendly hip-hop songs. Last night, leaks from his spiritual spawn Young Thug’s newest release Tha Carter VI appeared on the web bearing song titles of two of music’s cla**ic tracks, “Halftime” and “Beat It”. As with the album’s title, this attempted revaluation of titles indicates an artist hungry to obtain the throne in a way many others did: overthrowing the leader himself It’s a semiotic clash, and as Nietzsche himself understands, the first place to a**ert this desired change is by training the newest generations. Those without prior knowledge of Illmatic or Michael Jackson’s catalog, nor Lil Wayne’s Carter series of albums, already attach the aforementioned titles to Young Thug alone. Just as Kanye West flipped Nina Simone’s rendition of the song “Strange Fruit” to loom over his chaotic relationship ballad, Young Thug has a**igned a new meaning to all of these titles. Tha Carter VI, especially, becomes more onion-like in its layers, adding the newest context of the Birdman-Lil Wayne falling out to its status as a homage a la Elzhi’s Elmatic. Now, Young Thug isn’t looking for a sequel, he’s looking to be an equal. The transformation of the styles that Lil Wayne inaugurated and innovated by himself throughout his career, as I previously discussed in my piece on their only time on wax, “Take Kare”, belong to Thug himself. This isn’t to say that Wayne lacks the same quality or capabilities that he had before, but as with his jocking the beats of others to make them his, one artist has to fall back. This is more fan theory than actual reality, for the rest of Tha Carter VI's tracklist has yet to unveil itself. But I’d like nothing more than to hear a Young Thug song called “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”