Lil Wayne f/ Drake: "She Will"

Lil Wayne is effective as psychedelic loverman (“Motivation”) and rogue grammarian (”6 Foot 7 Foot”), but neither mode interests him all that much over the vast, lyrically focused Carter IV (2011). His familiar charisma, focused now on punchlines, has grown so immense that the paradigm-altering beats of Carter III (2008) (David Axelrod! “Let the Beat Build”!) seem but a distraction in retrospect.

Not that “She Will” doesn’t have a great beat; produced by erstwhile Weeknd collaborator T-Minus, it’s one of the standouts on the album, a moody, grayscale number with a lo-fi version of late-Eminem anthemic guitar, shorn of that emcee’s cheap hooks and “motivational” self-regard. Instead, we have Wayne bringing his current metaphorical overflow to bear on Drake in the same way that it worked on Rick Ross on “John” or it took “A Milli” to let the cup runneth over for “6 Foot 7 Foot.”

“I’m all about I / Give the rest of the vowels back,” he says, entertainingly self-centered, picking up a little for a more wistful-than-usual Drake. “What goes around comes around like a hula hoop”; “I tried to pay attention but attention paid me”: and even Drizzy-haters like myself recognize what he’s all about. Not just being angsty about the loss of truth in the airlock of fame, but explicitly about being “real”—the realness of fucking tied into being real “in the game,” this “Drake” now Drake, desire itself carrying all kinds of loaded meaning.

Which is probably a lot to stomach in the context of Weezy’s second-highest charting single, of course. It’s a banger that almost accidentally captures the recessionary zeitgeist perfectly. After all, Wayne is an artist who can change anything to fit his image, who forsakes introspection in order to change everything outstide of him. As long as he keeps showing me what an idiot I am for not getting Drake, or life in general, he can morph that familiar reggae-hiccup into whatever, and I’ll listen. And not just because it’s always on the radio.