Everybody knows Lil Wayne. But what if somebody doesn’t? Then Wheezy has a selection of songs to make an introduction.
Limited Choice
It was a host of the Not Just Football podcast who came up with this clever question, making Lil Wayne think about three songs that would sum up his artistry for an uninitiated. Wayne, being an artist, did not name his highest grossing hits. On the contrary, he focused on how to show his range, his ability to switch between styles and colours:
“Just so they could have a wide range of who I am or what it is, I’d probably give them something from a mixtape. Something like “God Bless Amerika”. Something with Eminem, “Drop the World”. Or I might just go with “How to Love”, just so they could say, ‘Okay, this is the same guy?!’”
Best Doesn’t Mean Best Selling
To be clear, Lil Wayne did not initially specify exactly which Eminem song he meant. He just did not argue with the host who fed him the line. But just as well, Wheezy’s choices are not as much about a song per se as about his ability to morph and change to different styles and emotions.
Mind you, Whezzy did not go to pull the biggest hits out of his hat for this task. The most streamed (No.25) and the highest charting (No.5) song out of these three, he names the last. “How to Love” reached No.5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 24 weeks overall.
On Spotify, it is listed at No.25 with 392 million streams. Meanwhile, the song Lil Wayne mentions first is the obscure mixtape hit “God Bless Amerika,” his 227th most played track on Spotify (21 million streams). Joint with Eminem, “Drop The World”, ranks No.34 on Spotify. The song reached No.18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010 and spent 20 weeks on the chart. Also, Wheezy put it on his greatest hits compilation.
Nothing since, no more collaborations between these two. Which is a shame considering how well they blend on the song. There are three joints out there already to prove the point.
Too Much To Remember
The last time we heared them together was on Wheezy’s Young Money Radio show, where two rap legends had a high quality conversation, sharing opinions on new artists and talking about the struggles of having a song catalogue so extensive that sometimes they have to run the search for a freshly written line to make sure they did not use it before.
