Every day’s a new adventure for Lil Wayne fans. If we’re not obsessed with the street date for Wayne’s apparently forthcoming album Carter V, we’re chasing guest verses, wondering about his health or discovering some weird line from an old track that we’d never heard before.
Last week Wayne issued an apology in the form of a new mixtape. Called Sorry 4 the Wait 2, it’s a sequel to his first apology tape, both of which Wayne issued because of delays on Tha Carter V. That record is to come out through his longtime home, Cash Money.
The problem? Wayne and his longtime friend Brian “Birdman” Williams, the label’s co-owner, are beefing. Less than a week before Tha Carter V was to be released in early December, Wayne issued a statement via Twitter:
“To all my fans, I want u to know that my album won’t and hasn’t been released bekuz Baby & Cash Money Rec refuse to release it,” he wrote.
Hence the delay, and the first biting lines of the first track, Coco. Rhyming over the beat propelling O.T. Genasis’ hit track, Wayne takes his version somewhere else: “Look what you made me do,” exclaims the artist to open, directing his ire at his label. “I’m sorry for the wait, I’m sorry for the wait,” he says, his voice in apology mode. “Tha Carter’s gonna be late, so I can drop a tape/The garden’s full of snakes so I had to escape.”
From there Wayne lashes out, repeatedly calling out Cash Money, which helped drive the rapper to the top of the charts, as “an army” and defiantly countering, “I’m a one-man army.” He threatens to fight like fictional drug kingpin Tony Montana and demands money Wayne claims he’s owed. This all happens in the first two minutes of Sorry 2, which clocks in at 80 minutes and 17 tracks. But the anger seldom dissipates.
Tracks feature Wayne rapping over others’ beats, tackling Beyonce’s Drunk in Love, turning it into a raunchy, male-dominated sex track that might make Jay Z a bit grumpy. Wayne hits Rae Sremmurd’s No Type and Bobby Shmurda’s Hot ... For Try Me, originally issued by Dej Loaf, Wayne teams with Mack Maine for a reinvention. Also making appearances are 2 Chainz, Christina Milian and Drake.
Driven by frustration and anger, the tape burns from start to finish. Wayne is master of the mixtape and his skills are powerful here.
