Album Review: "Rebirth" By Lil' Wayne by Ms.Jennifer

If Boba Fett made a record with Nickelback, the results would be a lot like the new rock album from Lil Wayne. Using Playing With Fire, the worst song from the Carter III as a starting point, this nu-metal meets auto-tune gumbo never treads beyond the initial love of its concept, "I’m a dope boy with a guitar," and winds up with just a little less substance than a Twilight message board. On Sunday night, Jay-Z picked up a Grammy for Death Of Auto-Tune, but Wayne’s album makes a stronger case for the banishment of the voice modulator than a thousand recordings by Jamie Foxx, Cher or T-Pain. This is the worst misfire since Axl Rose took the stage without Slash.
Beginning with American Star, Rebirth, the seventh studio album from the 27-year-old rapper from New Orleans, immediately hits a bum note. Featuring a screeching, computerized Wayne vocal, the track sounds like the instrumental from Michael Jackson’s Dirty Diana and the mediocre, vaguely Eddie Van Halen-esque guitar play would fail to impress in a band featuring will i. am, Fergie and that weird other guy in Black Eyed Peas. Lyrically, the song is completely Seinfeld, about nothing, and while the Carter III, the biggest and most lauded record of 2008, combined anger with wit and playfulness, Rebirth is almost pure rage. Songs like One Way Trip and Prom Queen sound like an angry 14-year-old venting about science homework and acne.
Guests roped into the repetitive, derivative twelve tracks include J.U.S.T.I.C.E. and Eminem, who performed the album’s best song, Drop the world at the Grammy's. Eminem, who produced the song, sounds crisp and hungry and, like on Forever, the hit posse cut from Drake, seems poised to once again become hip-hop's leading voice. At one point, that voice belonged to Lil Wayne, but on the rare occasion he does rap on this album, he's upstaged both by Eminem and Nicki Minaj, who also had the best rhymes on We Are Young Money, the pointless first release on Wayne's label.- Ms.Jennifer