by Dan O

Tha Carter 6 reaction was severe before the album dropped. When the tracklist had MGK and Jellyroll instead of Drake and Nicki people cashed in their chips. I would love to make fun of those people but in a real way…they were right. The people I disagree with are the ones trying to say Wayne lost his magic; the skills that dominated withering to a nub.

I listened to it while making breakfast with my eleven-year-old son. He enjoyed it and noted stand-out songs like Hip Hop, Sharks, and Bein Myself. For him Wayne rates well next to J.Cole, Big Sean and the pop rap stars of today. The mechanism of Wayne delivering his music hasn’t gotten worse. When he gets up a head of steam and goes it’s as good a show as you’ll find. I have a theory as to what’s wrong.

Wayne is a master of chaos, blowing emcees off tracks and making them sound like nerds because they came with a standard delivery and technique. He dropped mixtapes better than albums. I remember 50 Cent in an interview with MTV at the height of Weezy love throwing his hands up in the air and asking what his classic was? Wayne was flooding the market and every song felt like a moment in time that couldn’t be properly reproduced. The energy of a creative freestyle, the delivery of Missy, and the N.O. bounce. 

The Surrealists would clear their mind with no preordained plan for what to paint. They trusted their subconscious to feed them the most vivid imagery they would need. Imagine if they kept doing this over and over but stopped reading interesting books, stopped living outside of their safe zone, stopped checking what was going in the world of art outside of their clique. It’s a car with no fuel at that point.

Wayne has been on record that he doesn’t study politics, doesn’t study new rappers, in his own words he watches sports and sports discussion shows primarily. The most up to date reference on Carter 6 is wide receiver Puka Nacua but that doesn’t get us much. Musically we get Bono and a remake of Weezer’s Island In The Sun, a remake of Rock The Bells…all strong indicators that Wayne doesn’t ingest enough interesting new music. His unexpected is in need of a recharge. The production list of these nineteen tracks is a scattered head scratcher; from Mannie Fresh to former hippie mixtape rapper Mod Sun. The chaos machine is sputtering on fumes.

Wayne has lived at the top with a curated lifestyle that no one in his present audience can fully relate to. So, if he’s not going to use his power like Nas or Black Thought to ground us in stories to help us understand his perspective all we are left with is a buffet of old food that wouldn’t make sense to eat in one meal even if it was well prepared. I don’t want Wayne to feel bad about Carter 6. I want him to get out and chase new chapters of his life. The game will be here. People are using LL Cool J’s superb album The Force against Wayne(“if you want an OG who ain’t washed” type response) but the last real LL album before 2024’s The Force was Authentic from 2013. He took eleven years to live, study whatever he wanted, and get hungry again. Solution has to be one of two things: find more fuel for the chaos machine or become something new.