Lil Wayne’s 13th record, “Funeral,” sort of reminds me of something Yngwie Malmsteen would do. Just like Malmsteen’s noodly guitar work, Wayne’s rapping on “Funeral” is technically proficient, but ultimately soulless.
Now that I’ve angered the probably very small overlapping section on the Venn diagram of Lil Wayne and Yngwie fans, let’s provide some context.
“Funeral” has been forthcoming for some time now. Officially announced in 2016, the record first started to be talked about during the longstanding contractual disputes between Wayne and Cash Money Records executive Birdman over “Tha Carter V.” That record was teased for almost all of the 2010s, originally planned to be released in 2014. But due to what can generously be called disagreements between Wayne and Birdman, it took until 2018 for “Tha Carter V” to actually materialize.
And then once it finally came out, it was a bloated, overblown mess that easily could have cut 50 minutes without losing any valuable material. But I’m not reviewing that album again, so let’s move on.
“Funeral” started life as a plan to assuage the contractual issues that followed “Tha Carter V” so Wayne could just release something. But for various reasons, “Funeral” was itself delayed multiple times, finally coming out nearly four years after its intended release, and a year and a half after the record it was originally meant to replace.
And now that it’s here, it’s a bloated, overblown mess that easily could cut 50 minutes without losing any valuable material. The thing that makes it worse this time, though, is that even the “highlights” have a been-there-done-that feel to them.
That isn’t to say the album isn’t without its highlights. There’s a pretty solid run of songs that come around the middle of the track list, starting with “Wild Dogs.” It’s a song that shows off Wayne’s technical prowess with a blistering flow that can easily get caught in the listener’s head.
The issue with the song, though, is that it’s only flow. A close listen to the lyrics reveal the song really isn’t about much of anything — which, admittedly, has always been a hallmark of Wayne’s style. But to me, it’s just starting to come across as … kind of boring now. Wayne’s style feels locked in the mid-2000s, back when “Tha Carter” albums felt fresh and exciting. Now it all just feels tired.
In a recent interview, Wayne suggested he doesn’t keep track of what’s happening in rap right now. I wish he would, because then he might see that the genre has moved past his sound. He isn’t as lyrical as Kendrick and Cole, and his songs just aren’t as fun as the Migos’ and Young Thug’s. He may have been a GOAT, but his time is long past him.
Late-album cut “Ball Hard” shows this off. Wayne’s verse is him just listing celebrities whose names kind of rhyme. Like, that’s it. Lil Twist massively upstages him with a verse that, out of context, would only be pretty good. But considering Twist is the only one on the song who is actually rapping, it’s not hard to do.
The biggest issue with the record, though, is that it’s just so stylistically all-over-the-place. “I Don’t Sleep” featuring Takeoff — incidentally my favorite track on the album — has a bouncy feel that would be perfect on a Young Thug song, but only a few songs later Wayne goes dark for “Get Outta My Head,” another posthumous feature from XXXTentacion.
This song really reveals how out of touch with the current sound Wayne is. Wayne feels totally out of place next to X’s harsh, screamed vocals, and Wayne’s out of tune and offbeat singing are genuinely difficult to listen to.
For a record that’s all about vocal flow, there’s no coherent flow to the whole thing. Every song sounds like it could have come off any of Wayne’s projects.
There are basically only three songs on this: the one where Wayne raps fast about weird sex, the one where he raps slow about hating himself and the one that features Adam Levine that can go on the radio.
It’s just that, over and over. For nearly 80 minutes.
It’s all utterly forgettable.
