Lil' Wayne goes through engineers fast. The last one quit because he stopped being able to tell what day it was, waking up at midnight and recording until noon wasn't natural for him. Whether he is driven from a mixture of cough syrup and weed or just his inner-nature, Wayne appears to be built for this. He's busy, and raps non-stop. He doesn't right down lyrics, he flows to a beat and rewinds and re-records until he has a track together.
He quickly oscillates between generosity and hostility, maybe its the drugs and fame or perhaps it is just who he is. In between recording sessions, he watches Sportscenter and fuels himself on blunts and syrup. All of this I know from the most recent GQ article about him. Many people write this off as more uninformed media creating an icon, but anyone who listens to rap can't deny Lil' Wayne's talent. Aside from his endless stamina and drug use, there is another clue to his success - he visualizes everything before he makes a song. He visualizes the video, the crowd, and even him performing it before writing a word.
Just one music video will make it clear that Lil' Wayne isn't quite the average rapper. Earlier in his career, aside from his diminutive size and monster flow he looked like a typical rapper - but lately he looks half thug half indie kid. Even that isn't quite fair, what he really looks like is Lil' Wayne. He has successfully carved out a very clear image for himself.
The key passage of this article, the one that inspired me and got me thinking was this: "The substances will never run out, they will always be at his elbow in their proper places, in their proper measures, and he will never have to glide back down to earth. Time can be stopped. A million songs can be made. The night can be made to last forever. Wayne measures out the Voss-and-syrup mixture himself and then caps the bottle again, now filled with the pale pink liquid."
What that quote taps into is a drive against mortality, and a search for any way possible to stay as creative and productive as possible for as long as you can. The way that Lil' Wayne uses drugs to fuel his art is nothing revolutionary, the history of music is littered with the overdosed bodies of rockstars who couldn't create without a substance, but for some reason what Wayne is doing doesn't seem as idiotic or fatalistic. Maybe my opinion will change if he overdoses, but right now his work ethic and desire to be the best rapper alive allow me to view his drug abuse in a way I rarely see drugs. I see him using cough syrup and weed in order to create something lasting. People always say stardom makes you numb and the only way these people can feel anything is to be high. That's bullshit, the majority of these dead addicts weren't using to feel something they were using to feel nothing.
Wayne isn't just using these substances in a nihilistic way. He is using them to keep himself in a foggy state, where he is most creative. He wavers, goes in and out of it, but prolongs his moments of insight by slowing his mind down and rapping non-stop. This can't be great for his body, and if he could train himself to be able to relax into it instead of forcing his mind there I imagine it would be better, but every artist is lured into wondering whether insight can be provided medicinally.
Art by nature grows by experimentation, and people are no different. Musicians, writers, and painters alike constantly experiment and it is no surprise that Oscar Wilde drank absinthe, or that William Faulkner drank whiskey. It could have been a different ritual but the results would have been different. Faulkner has to drink alcohol to write the way he does, Wayne can't rap his slow, confident and clever flow without a push from Robitussin. Maybe he could clean up but he might lose his skill and end up like Metallica making sub-par music for the rest of his career.
The drive to perform at the highest level in his chosen craft is why he's drinking and smoking all night long. Is it escapism? Sure. Is he hurting himself? Sure. Is it the culture he's in? Definitely. Its tremendously easy to mourn the death of someone like Jimi Hendrix and wonder what he could have created had he lived, had he cleaned up - but what if he couldn't have seen music the way he did without drugs?
Due to my background there is no need to be worried about me wasting any of my life using drugs. I am writing this to express how important substances have been in the history of music, art, and literature. There are better ways to create the perfect creative state, but once you have stumbled on something that is working brilliantly I understand how difficult it can be to give it up. Would you be able to suddenly change your process if millions were at stake? What if your best album was at stake? Or what if you just couldn't handle it anymore and needed those drugs to get by and be able to keep making music?
Fuck.. supposedly Wayne quit Syrup. Got some editing to do..
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