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Music

A Year of Lil Wayne: "Fo Sheezy" Was the Sound of 2002

Wayne's rapping on the verses is some of the most musical rapping you will ever hear anywhere.

Day 193: "Fo Sheezy" – 500 Degreez, 2002

"Fo Sheezy" is what the year 2002 sounded like. It's a Lil Wayne song off the album 500 Degreez, so named to emphasize the split between Juvenile and Cash Money (incidentally, "Fo Sheezy" has the dart, "said she like Juvie but she prefer Wayne"). It sounds like 2002 in the sense of what is happening sonically but also in the ideas of it and the stakes. To begin with the obvious: This is an era in which you could just spell out your name and it out counted as a hook. A year earlier, Jay Z had scored one of his biggest hits to date with "Izzo," which was exactly one such song. That doesn't mean that Wayne's hook doesn't bang, though. To the contrary. It's sick. It's memorable. It could conceivably go in a club, should it be pressed into the task. Part of that ability is tied to Wayne's rapping on the verses, which is some of the most musical rapping you will ever hear anywhere. A lot of MCs tackle this type of space age, stripped down laser funk by cutting against it. Think about the way that Jay Z's vocals stand out on a Neptunes beat. But Wayne rides it so smoothly that his verses seem to race by like the sports cars he boasts about driving. Speaking of those cars, how about when he raps: "I'm a mess, blow the best of onion / in a Testa, stuntin / and the pistol's right next to cousin. The way that he raps the word "pistol" as the beat cuts out brings the entire image to life, and you can suddenly see the gun lying there on the passenger seat of this Ferrari. The flow through these lines is impeccable, handling the turns on the beat with graceful steering. That's a hallmark of the whole song, from the moment it opens with this slickly executed suite of bars: "You know they sayin' since the bar back on the dro, he lackin' the flow / But if that ever happen, whoa! I ain't rappin' no mo'." Elegant. And best of all, it's elegance for the sake of elegance. This song didn't need to fill in any pop culture narrative other than: Lil Wayne is sweet. Everyone involved just wanted to make a cool-sounding song, and that's what they did. 2002 sounded like these dry laser synths that conjured funk out of computers. This is what the recording technology of the time produced, a digital but still rougher feel than the pristine crispness we're capable of today. Every line crackles with energy because of that sound. Wayne raps "I'm so gangsta / if she don't go down no thank ya" so smoothly you can't help but admire it. He jauntily sums up the appeal of his music in a way that absolves any of the evil shit that he might rap elsewhere, winning you over with, "I help people with problems look on the bright side." The lack of narrative, I think, is key. What 2002 sounded like—and what people are yearning for when they say they miss the old days of rap—is an absence of stakes. Now there is too much information at our fingertips. We have to know everything and see how everything connects. We triangulate our enjoyment of songs off other people's taste so we can find common ground of what to discuss on our apps all day. We don't appreciate something if it doesn't somehow advance the grand plot of life. But plot advances slowly and in unexpected places, and perhaps the best way to understand a year isn't to look back at the inscribed narratives, the statistics, but to simply soak in the parts of it that were just trying to be. This is a song that just is, and it's a great song because of it. It's the perfect sound of 2002 and, while you're listening to it, the only Lil Wayne song you'll ever need.

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