A Year of Lil Wayne: Wayne and Kendrick and Future and Mike WiLL Made-It

Day 129: "Buy the World" feat. Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, and Future – Mike WiLL Made-It, Ransom , 2014

Kyle: In the office today we've been discussing Mike WiLL, the number one producer in the world right now (or something close to it), and so, naturally, it makes sense to listen to his work with Lil Wayne. "Buy the World" is, on paper, the best posse cut of all time: Lil Wayne, Future, and Kendrick Lamar. Unfortunately, Future is limited to a pretty anemic hook, and, while Kendrick can be heard workshopping the ideas from "For Free?," neither he nor Wayne delivers his finest work. Still, Wayne has a few punchlines—"just like assume I get ass from the start"—and the sheer fact that, once again, this exists, is a blessing all by itself. This is, as far as I'm aware, the only song with both Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar on it and the only song with both Future and Kendrick Lamar on it. So we should talk about it ad nauseum in the hope that my two favorite rappers, Lil Wayne and Future, will make many, many, many more songs with the current best rapper alive, Kendrick Lamar. Not to do that whole rap fan fantasy league gamesmanship thing, but also kind of to do that. Because come on let's be real.

Lawrence: On top of acknowledging Mike WiLL as arguably the best producer in the game right now, we equally need to recognize that without him, we'd probably never get a song with these three on it. That's the power his possesses; his beats are so amazing that no maker of music in their right mind would pass up this type of blessing. I mean, let's be real: the best Jay Z song in recent memory is "Beach is Better"—a 55-second-long classic that is so fire that Jay knew that we wouldn't be able to safely ingest a full track of him rapping on a Mike WiLL beat. I think it's probably best for humanity that a bomb of that magnitude not be dropped on us.

But for this song in particular, I agree with you Kyle: its sheer existence is a strong enough flex but it's not quite hitting. We don't get a proper Future contribution and for a song that features the two best rappers of the 21st century, it's a bit too jingle-like. A song with Wayne and Kendrick needs to have menacing production with the perfect mixture of pure ignorance, social commentary, and off-the-wall metaphors. At least in my mind, that's what I envision when I think of these two sparring.

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