Dedication 6, Beats & Judging the Modern Rap Album Part III
As a fan of rap, there are certain things that boggle my mind. Pop stars that try to rap. A YouTuber releasing a diss track. But most of all, its the amount of faith that we, as fans, put into the business and its artists.
We waited for 15 years for Dr. Dre's Detox, just for it to be cancelled. No Way Out 2, which is being labelled as Diddy's final album, has been speculated about since early 2015 with no tangible results. Finally, Tha Carter V by Lil Wayne, which has been on the shelf by Young Money Cash Money since who knows when, with no one having the slightest clue of when it's going to be released. This means that every single project that Weezy has put out since he released Tha Carter IV (which is a staggering 7 mixtapes and an album in 6 years, with 3 in 2017) has made my level of hatred for the money aspect of the business grow more and more. They let him release all this material, and even mixtapes using other people's beats, but they won't release the album he's been touting for the past 6 years? But that thought process led me to thinking about beats.
When we analyze music, specifically albums in the rap genre, instrumentals are so important. They are the backbone to a track. A rapper could say complete trash (i.e Big Shaq on Man's Not Hot), but if the beat is good, we will accept it and even bump to it in any socially acceptable place. Look at some of the greatest rappers to grace the game - Eminem and 50 Cent saw some of their best, if not their best work, when they had Dre in the studio making the beat and producing the track. Atlanta group Migos revolutionized the game by rapping on the triplet flow, but that wouldn't have been possible without the southern trap beat that they spent countless hours innovating.
Back to Lil Wayne, when you look at his latest release, Dedication 6, it follows the same formula that all of the other mixtapes in the Dedication series. Get a good beat from the past year and a half, remix it a bit, get Wayne on it and change the name. It's so simple but Tunechi is such a workhorse and lyricist that it's hard to deny that the formula works. All he really need is a good beat. From the release of Tha Carter III onto mid-2012, Lil Wayne released a panoply of features, with 50 of them charting in the US Billboard Hot 100. All he needs is a good beat, which during that time span, were given as he had tracks with Drake, French Montana and even Enrique Iglesias. While he does sometimes falter with his choice of beats, he is the artist who personifies the importance that a producer has in the success of a good project, may it be big or small.
The modern rap album has taken itself back into the roots of Hip-Hop, where DJ's were just as important as the Wordsmith. Today, Metro Boomin, DJ Mustard, 40 and so many others are trailblazing and making sure that the game recognizes the people who spend countless hours in the studio trying to give their artists the best platform so that they can, in turn, give us what will become the soundtracks to our lives.
When I analyze the modern rap album, I take into account the people in the back and the work that they put into the album. The rule is as follows: Never disrespect the beat. I can't disrespect the beat by calling it trash when it isn't and I can't disrespect the beat by calling it great when it isn't. Call it how it is and in the most objective way in this very subjective art form. With that thought out, I have to call out the artist if they do the beat dirty and be ridiculous when the beat clearly deserves better than what it got.
We came from sampling beats illegally to get parties bumping in the Bronx to the biggest genre in the United States and possibly the world. Let's not do the game dirty.