Thankfully rap-rock died a deserved death in the early noughties but as with any lucrative commercial genre people have continued to drag its rotting and bloated corpse back into the studio. Lil Wayne’s latest release sees him taint his traditional rap formula with a myriad of riffs and beats so bland they wouldn’t even make it onto a Sugababes’ B-side.
Lil Wayne has been described as “an auto-tuned Kid Rock” though that’s somewhat debatable as not even the latter’s lyrics are quite as hackneyed or trite as anything on Rebirth. The sublime word play of Tha Carter is at best a distant memory and at worst a heart-breaking reminder of better times. Everything about the album screams bargain basement; the lack of depth is laughable as Lil Wayne rattles through 45 minutes of bizarrely emotionless angst. The record’s childish themes and poor delivery make a mockery of the self-proclaimed “best rapper alive.”
Rebirth opens with the banal and unsophisticated ‘American Star’: “Listening to my own voice in my black Rolls Royce/ Get the girls of my choice to take off their shorts and blouses.” As you can see: tragically unoriginal. The foul aroma of superficiality continues through the equally pedestrian ‘Prom Queen’, a tale of such insipid high school trauma that would make even Busted wince. Lil Wayne seems to have taken all the worst aspects of rock and shoehorned them beneath a rather lightweight rap effort – despite the instantly forgettable track list this album will be remembered as one of the most ill-conceived and blatantly commercial ventures of the decade.