Lil Wayne

Jon Pareles’ “A Southern Rapper With a Lot of Friends“:

In his music, Lil Wayne goes well beyond the basics of “dirty South” hip-hop. His hoarse voice gives his songs a texture that’s both weathered and slyly amused, for a glimmer of New Orleans R&B. He regularly changes up his delivery, borrowing Jamaican dancehall inflections or landing syllables on unlikely offbeats. He also has some quirky fixations: on food, on 1980s movies and on punning wordplay. Over the last few years, he has been ubiquitous, not only on his own albums but also on mixtapes and as a collaborator. He let the women in the audience enthusiastically sing the melody of “You,” a 2006 single by Lloyd that had a guest rap by Lil Wayne.