He's kind of like Travis McCoy with more tattoos, more singing, and more overt weed references. Wiz benefits from some fun production on his new LP Rolling Papers, but ends up sounding like little more than a more competent version of Kid Cudi. Is that a bad thing though? The weird part about this album is despite the fact that the vocals and verses are never all that stellar, they don't ruin any songs in particular.
Well they almost do. "Hopes and Dreams" for example has a ridiculous couple lines about how Wiz could take you back to his place, or he would go to your place, but he will still be throwing money in the air and watching it fall down. "Roll Up" has one of the most stupidly saccharine hooks, with kind of silly synths. Wiz even has a dumb breakup song, titled "Get Your Shit".
But, where this album hits, the atmospherics take over and one is sort of lulled into not scrutinizing Wiz quite so closely. "The Race" has a couple clever double entendres about papers (hurr hurr), but the beat is just so soothing, that all you want to do is take a drive in the late summer sun with the windows down. "Top Floor" has that similar hazy jam mentality. "Black and Yellow" should pump you up and make you root for the Steelers, but aside from the entertaining beat, the rhymes are forgettable. Not to mention that Weezy totally killed it on "Green and Yellow", for example:
"We knocked the Eagles and the Falcons and the Bears off / Now we ’bout to cut Troy Polamalu hair off"
But for Wizzy not Weezy, the critic in me wonders what an instrumental of this album would sound like, or what a more artful MC would have done with these beats, but the homie in me just exhales, relaxes, and ignores the obvious shortcomings of an otherwise entertaining pop record.
Lil' Wayne - Green & Yellow by Hypetrak
Wiz Khalifa - "The Race"
Wiz Khalifa - "Top Floor"
there are worse rappers, but bro is clearly a poor man's curren$y
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