Friday, August 25th
what’s new
Jon Batiste, “Uneasy” (ft. Lil Wayne), 8/18/23
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Chicago (Lurie Garden)
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Tag: Lil Wayne
2018
Monday, November 26th
what’s new
Lil Wayne (feat. Post Malone), “What About Me,” 11/9/18
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
2014
Monday, February 3rd
yesterday
Snowy fields, bare trees, big sky: as my son Luke, now twenty-two, drives us from a family gathering in Nebraska to his place in Kansas City, these are some of the sounds that fill the car.
Pusha T, “40 Acres” (feat. The Dream), 2013
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J. Cole, “Killers,” 2011
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Lil Wayne, “I Miss My Dawgs,” 2011
*****
taking a break
Back in a while.
2012
Wednesday, 8/22/12
It’s impossible, sometimes, to separate our experience of music, especially pop music, from the surrounding circumstances. The other day, for instance, I was taking my son Luke back to school in Bloomington, Indiana. He was playing dashboard DJ. As we rolled through the hills of southern Indiana, nearing our destination, this came on after a long stretch of hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy, Tyga, et al.), and the electronic intro, the Björk-like voice—they lit up the highway.
Ellie Goulding, “Lights”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective (through 9/3/12)
Look Mickey (1961)
*****
Artist’s Studio “Look Mickey” (1973)
2012
Friday, 4/27/12
what’s new
The Very Best, “Yoshua Alikuti” (Nairobi, Kenya), 2012
Any resemblance to this is purely intentional.
Lil Wayne, “A Milli,” 2008
*****
Here’s a big shout-out to my son Alex, who just finished his last week of classes, graduates from Harvard next month, and introduced me to The Very Best in the first place.
2011
Monday, 3/21/11
what’s new
(an occasional series)
Some parents, going for a long drive with their kids, wrestle for control of the CD player. I cede it, happily. How else am I going to hear this stuff?
Yesterday, the last day of his spring break, my 19-year-old son Luke and I drove to Bloomington, Indiana. Here are a couple of the things he played.
This is my favorite song right now.
Mac Miller, “Best Day Ever” (bonus track), 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.
*****
This is the big remix.
Kanye West (featuring Rhianna), “All of the Lights”
Remix with Lil Wayne, Big Sean & Drake, 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.
2010
Saturday, 7/3/10
jailhouse rock
Speaking of prison music, here—thanks to a tip from my (19-year-old) son Luke—is the indomitable Lil Wayne, phoning in a verse for a new Drake track from Rikers Island (New York City), where he’s serving a year after pleading guilty to a gun charge.
Lil Wayne, Rikers Island/Drake, “Light Up” (2010)
lagniappe
Even behind bars, Lil Wayne can’t catch a break. The incarcerated rapper has reportedly been caught with a contraband MP3 player inside Rikers Island prison.
Weezy’s secret jams were discovered during a routine search on Tuedsay morning, when officials found unauthorised headphones and the charger for an MP3 player hidden in his dustbin. “We found the items wrapped in an aluminum potato chip bag, in a garbage can,” an anonymous official told Fox News. Officers then scoured the “housing area” where Wayne is incarcerated, uncovering a matching MP3 player in the cell of another inmate.
While prisoners are permitted to purchase an AM/FM radio and basic headphones from the Rikers Island commissary, inmates are banned from using fancy headphones, MP3 players, or, even, chargers for MP3 players. Weezy and his fellow inmate will be charged with possession of contraband, and “some discipline can follow”, the official said.
Lil Wayne is serving a one-year prison sentence for weapons infractions, stemming from an incident in July 2007. Although sentencing was repeatedly postponed, he was eventually jailed in early February. A month before beginning his term, Weezy told Rolling stone that he was “looking forward to” prison. “I’ll have an iPod, and I’ll make sure they keep sending me beats,” he said.
Officials were quick to point out that the seized MP3 player is not, in fact, an iPod. We’re not sure what this means except, perhaps, that they may wish to check the other empty crisp packets … just in case.
2009
Monday, 11/16/09
Saturday morning, driving down to Champaign-Urbana to visit my younger son Luke (Dads’ Weekend at the U of I), when the radio signal on Scott Simon’s NPR show started to fade (interviews this week with Wes Anderson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), I took out this CD and slid it into the dashboard player—something Luke gave me, a couple years ago, for Christmas.
Wyclef Jean, Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant (2007)
“Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)” (with Akon and Lil Wayne)
*****
“Any Other Day” (with Norah Jones)
*****
“Fast Car” (with Paul Simon)
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lagniappe
A native of Haiti, WJ established a foundation to provide aid to the people of that country, which can be found here.
Haiti is my native country, one I know as the first black nation to gain independence in 1804. Most other people seem to know Haiti only by the statistics about how bad things are there. The majority of its 8 million residents live on less than $1 per day. Unemployment is close to 80 percent, and more than half the population is under 21 years old. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
I have been spending a lot of time talking with people in my native country to try and understand what is behind these statistics and the past escalation of violence, all of which brings tears to my eyes. I have had conversations with gang leaders, met with the police officers and sat down with the leaders of the militias and the army. I have talked with Haitians from all walks of life, all colors of skin, all backgrounds and beliefs. From all these people I hear only one thing in my head and feel only one thing in my heart–that there is only one Haiti. Every Haitian loves their country like a mother loves her child.
I see old women with large bags of rice on their heads and men on street corners selling sugarcane and mangos, all just trying to survive with a strong sense of pride. Walking past a church in my village, I hear the congregation singing an appeal to God to hear their cries and grant deliverance to Haiti. Through experiences like this, I sense where my mother and my father got their strength. Now the whole country needs to reach deep into the spirit and strength that is part of our heritage.
The objective of [my foundation] Yéle Haiti is to restore pride and a reason to hope, and for the whole country to regain the deep spirit and force that is part of our heritage.—Wyclef Jean
music clip of the day 