Gino’s Music Corner: Dedication 4 – Lil Wayne

So here we have Dedication 4. O fuk sry, my bd, Dedikation 4, thks. The anticipation for this mixtape was interesting. The hype was divided as follows: 30% was people dying to hear it, 30% was people dying to hate it, 30% was YMCMB Stans who love anything put out, 30% of it was owned by Birdman, 110% of that 120% was fans waiting for the rebirth (no.. not THAT Rebirth) of Old Lil Wayne, and the other 10% is 15 year old white girls. Lil Wayne used to be my favorite rapper, so in my heart of hearts I’m really hoping this mixtape sparks his revival. That being said, I’m a realist.. so my expectations aren’t set that high. Like all these reviews, I’ll be writing down how I feel as I hear these joints. If at any point what I’m saying bothers you, go ahead and drag your mouse to the top left corner of your monitor and hit the tiny “x” or red dot. Here we go.

1. “So Dedicated (Feat. Birdman)” Before listening, the first 30 seconds of this song are probably his most important 30 seconds in a while. If he says some wack gimmicky corny shit then that’ll put a bad taste in my mouth for the remainder of the tape. The beat is hard as hell, so that’s a good start. This song is just bars and I’d say Weezy went in for the most part. His Raw Lyric-to-Corny Lyric Ratio was at about a 12:3 which is pretty good, although he did drop a “Life is a bitch…” punchline already. ZZzzzZz. I was waiting for Birdman to come in and drop some Birdman Handrubs over the beat with a struggle verse to match, but fortunately he just talked some shit at the end. Solid jawn to start off, lets move on.

 2. “Same Damn Tune” If you’ve heard “Same Damn Time” by Future, then you’d know Sonny Digital produced a monster here. The synths in this are cold as hell. Wayne went in on this song.

GHOST NOTE: I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about this whole Trukfit/Skateboarding shit. He mentions it in every song and I think its sort of annoying, but he spends a lot of time skateboarding and has money invested in a business so I’m not mad at him. Skate on.

3. “Cashed Out” I’m so sick of this fucking Cashout song I almost turned it off at :00 once I heard the Gulligan Island ass melody drop. I’m over it though. Wayne drops some cold bars on this, but I’ll probably never listen to it again. I didn’t even listen to the last minute to be honest. Matter fact, I don’t even want to write anything else about this so let’s just keep it moving.

4. “No Worries (Feat. Detail)” This song starts with a pretty dope hook. I’ve never heard of this Detail dude before, but he sounds like Akon on autotune. The beat is hard. Wayne has his ¼ singing, ¾ rapping voice going here. This song is cool for the most part, but Weezy does let off this Rockstar Cookie Monster scream at the end of this song that made me spit out a little bit of my chocolate milk onto my Macbook. So I dunno this song is iiight.

5. “Mercy (Feat. Nicki Minaj)” Aww shit here goes that Kanye joint. The only thing more weird than the chant sample used on this beat is the stupid bullshit Nicki Minaj starts the song off with. Speaking in some stupiddumbfuck accent one of her split-personalities made up or whatever. I swear she’s the corniest ball in the cornball patch. But look I can’t even hate, she laid down a hard verse here. She didn’t use her “HIT THE LITTLE BUTTON ON THE SITBACK CHAIR!” voice until the last line where she says some satanic garbage in some satanic language with some satanic deep voice or something. I hate Nicki Minaj. So then Lil Wayne starts his verse in the Kanye slot of the song. He spits a lot of cornlines until the beat drops again, then he goes in for the remainder of the song, including the last 30 seconds when he screws it down.

6. “Burn” Maaaan I can’t help but mean mug when this beat drops. Weezy does the beat justice, this shit is hard.

7. “Amen (Feat. Boo)” This is the best song on here so far. Wayne uses wordplay on here that’s more creative than created and the punchlines are hitting. This “Boo” guy delivers a filler voice without a rememberal line on it, real skippable. Move on.

8. “Get Smoked (Feat. Lil Mouse)” If you don’t know about Lil Mouse by now, make sure you watch the original “Get Smoked” music video first. If you don’t feel like looking it up yourself, here’s the link –> http://bit.ly/PEblyD

The controversy is pretty self explanatory, Lil Mouse is a 13 year old kid out of Chicago rapping about murder and smoking people (you know, the type of shit we all partook in during 7^th grade). That being said, this is the hardest shit on here so far. Lil Mouse sounds like an 8 year old, but he still got me hitting that Money Dance.

*hits Money Dance*

9. “My Homies (Feat. Young Jeezy, Jae Millz, & Gudda Gudda)” This beat has always been annoying as shit to me. Sounds like a trance techno video game ringtone. However, Jeezy is on here, so I started scraping pots and pulled out the baking soda for his verse. Other than that I’m not really crazy about this song, but I’m biased.

10. “Green Ranger (Feat. J. Cole)” Look I need to address this J. Cole thing. STOP HATING ON THE MAN FOR NO REASON, STOP SLEEPING ON HIM. CAPS LOCK OFF. Dude is a very talented artist with a lot of drive, so y’all need to chill on this fabricated nonsense slander. I haven’t finished the tape obviously, but I can already tell Cole dropped the best verse on here. Lil Wayne comes in though and kills this shit too even though “he doesn’t even like this beat, so fuck it”. This is my favorite jawn on here. I’ma run it back, then discuss some shit that I don’t like with y’all.

 11. “I Don’t Like” Before I start, can we all please make a pact to stop saying #ThatsThatShitIDontLike on twitter for things that we don’t like, please? White girls? Everybody? Please? Thanks. So I’ve heard about 132151 different versions of this song and none have been in the same league as the G.O.O.D. version. This one is no different, but it’s iiight.. iiight bars.. iight moving on. I’ll leave you with this though:

WHITE DIAMONDS… VANILLA ICE!

12. “No Lie” REAL N****A SAY TRUUUUE! But look first off, Wayne talks about eating box too much for me. It’s distracting. Don’t get me wrong I got nothing against hitting triples and what-not, but he says some vulgar, trifling shit. He already mentioned “pussy bushes” on a previous song I can’t remember on here, but God it just doesn’t stop with this guy man. Every song. This joint is alright though. Another iiight joint.

13. “Magic (Feat. Flo)” Flo sounds like a combination of every sidekick on Young Money. I swear other than Drake and Nicki Minaj, Wayne is like the Michael Jordan of record label management. He drafted the most mediocre musicians outchea man. This dude is annoying as hell. He said some shit about pig pussy being pork and bears whipping their ass with rabbits and I’ve just had enough of this dude for the remainder of my life. Wayne went kind of hard. Kind of. Notice all these iights and kind ofs…

GHOST NOTE: Mixtape going downhill, quickly.

14. “Wish You Would” This is over that ‘Ye joint. Fortunately I don’t have to hear DJ Khaled yelling “YO KANYEEE’’’’!!! POP YO SHIT!!!!” That being said, this is a straight little song over a track I originally forgot about. On to the last song.

15. “A Dedication” Wayne philosophizes and just talks for 6 minutes. Needless to say, I didn’t listen past 1:42. Not sure why I even listened that long. He did talk about how he built a skatepark in New Orleans to get the kids off the street though, which I fuck with. But yeah, anyway, that’s the mixtape.

FINAL THOUGHT Unfortunately, the Trukfit 4 mixtape completely met my expectations. Other than a few songs (Green Ranger being the best by 30 kilometers) this tape was very average. There were some dope wordplay in here but most of it felt forced and random. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the resurrection of Old Wayne we were hoping for. It’s official, there won’t be anymore songs like “Tha Mobb” or “Get Em” or “Rewind” or “Ridin’ With That AK” or even “I Told Y’all”. Just let it go, folks, The Tunechi Trukfit Era is here to stay.

GHOST GRADE: 70.2% (C-)

*GHOST PS Lil Wayne said he’d “Fuck a bitch to some Drake” on one of these joints. Just curious how y’all feel about that…

HAVE YOU LISTENED TO Dedication 4? IF SO WHAT’D YOU THINK OF IT? WHAT CURRENT OR UPCOMING PROJECT SHOULD I REVIEW NEXT? Let me know below.

Still haven’t downloaded Dedication 4? Get it free from HotNewHipHop or DatPiff.