A Year of Lil Wayne: "One More Chance"

Day 24: "One More Chance" – Sqad Up Vol. 7 (10,000 Bars), 2002

"Dude… dude… Who you know fucking with me man?"

There are a few spots in Wayne's 10,000 Bars where he pulls up between verses to evaluate what's going on—they get more numerous toward the end as he's running out of steam—but the highlight is surely this one, where he seems to both come up for air and realize just how otherworldly the rapping he's doing is. He's just come off one of the craziest flows of the whole project, which extends into a run at the beginning here where he drops the gem, "I'm like Iverson dog I be balling but very street." After a pause to recalibrate he hops back like he was born on this beat—"holler at the don!"—-and then he really proves his point.

If I had to ask you to describe what you'd do to your worst enemy if given the chance to do the worst thing you could think of, I imagine you'd come up with something along the lines of "I'd shoot them," maybe with a few added details about pulling their toenails out first or something if you were extra creative. Here's the dizzying set of internal rhyme-filled ideas that Wayne comes up with:

Yes expect the worse when you fuck with the squad right
Pull you out your car at a stoplight 
Catch you in the waist make you my height
This shit's not nice
I have you chopped twice for a hot price
Or I can take off my ice and hit your block and stop life
Can you see that
Properly? under my seat is where the heat at
Direct in your head is where the bullets meet at

"Direct in your head is where the bullets meet at." That's how Wayne describes shooting someone. Roundabout, sure, but doesn't it make you just amazed at the capabilities of the English language to hear something like that? And just reading it in your head it's hard to piece it together in a way that fits on a beat. Meanwhile Wayne makes it out to be the easiest thing in the world. Dude… dude… Nobody is fucking with him.