Who Is The Greatest Rapper Of All Time? Lil Wayne Is According To Ice Cube.
It's hard to argue with one of the founding fathers of modern day hip hop, the man Ice Cube himself.
Personally, I had him #2 on my Top 50 list a few years ago
As I told Cube, in agreement, Lil Wayne's brain just works different from the rest of us. He's on another level lyrically and I do genuinely believe him when he repeatedly tells us all that he's a martian.
One of the best interviews I've read came from an old issue of GQ where the journalist showed up to follow Wayne around for a day. Wayne and his crew were caught totally off guard and basically told the guy fuck off. Then they changed their minds and invited him to tag along for a regular, casual 48 hours or so in the life of Lil Wayne.
What transpired was a ride along Wayne's bus, (he has several of them, as he does houses, but he doesn't actually live in his houses. He just parks his tour buses at them, hangs out sometimes inside the house, party's, whatever, then retreats back to the bus where he does the majority of his work and sleeps). He became accustomed to sleeping on tour buses since touring at such a young age. So he's comfortable there. He's also most comfortable recording on them. He's built out world class, state of the art, recording studios aboard each one of them. He also has them outfit with like 30 televisions all over the place tuned into the various different ESPN channels at all hours. Like a sports bar. He writes non stop. He has tens of thousands of notebooks he keeps around that he just fills up incessantly with lyrics and ideas. And he's always high. The GQ journalist said he couldn't believe how much lean, weed, and alcohol Wayne and his crew were constantly ingesting. Wayne told him straight up that that's the only way he can function.
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They eventually rolled to an actual recording studio where Wayne laid down some verses over some rock instrumentals (this was back in the late 2000's when he was on a hard rock and roll kick (think Porcelain Black, Kevin Rudolph, or "Prom Queen".) And he was blown away at Wayne's work ethic and schedule. Hours blew by as Wayne worked non stop, on material he later admitted would never even see the light of day because of how high his standards are. Here's a guy who pumps out albums and mixtapes still to this day at a pace thats unheard of (except for when he was incarcerated) and one can only imagine how much stuff he has in the vault that we'll never get to hear. He's a machine.
If you want to hear what else Cube had to say, give our little old podcast a listen, "On The Guest List", and subscribe, like, and share while you're at it!