Lil Wayne shows his frenetic yet polite side at Milwaukee's Summerfest, heading a hip-hop bill with Wiz Khalifa and Wu-Tang Clan
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Lil Wayne is a very polite fellow.
Proof: When the New Orleans-reared rapper performed at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater Saturday night, he said “thank you” as often as the late Wesley Willis used to end his Casio-preset compositions with an advertising slogan.
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Which is to say, he said “thank you” every single time he finished a number.
That meant the audience, which looked to be close to the venue's capacity, got to hear “thank you” roughly every 90 to 150 seconds, because Lil Wayne’s set resembled a hip-hop mixtape curated by Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard, infamous for writing hundreds of pop-rock songs that rarely reach the three-minute mark.
Lil Wayne is also an eccentric fellow.
If his bursts of rapping and dancing were ultra-short, they were also ultra-frenetic, and with his wiry frame, high-wattage grin and endearing wheeziness (maybe not the source of his nickname “Weezy”), he resembled a melted combination of Sly Stone and Prince, with Lee “Scratch” Perry dyed-blond dreads up top.
He held forth on the mic with the potentially unsteady swagger of a schizophrenic street preacher, whether he was running through a stop-start medley of his “features” (guest shots on other people’s songs) or taking a guaranteed Wisconsinite-pleasing turn toward “Green and Yellow,” his nod to the Green Bay Packers.
If there was any consistency besides quick bursts, it came from DJ T. Lewis, who provided savvy samples and muscle-massaging beats, and Yayo the Drummer, who seemed determined to outdo Keith Moon and Philly Joe Jones at the same time.
Lil Wayne is, furthermore, an indulgent fellow.
He kept telling the audience to make some noise on behalf of themselves; he brought out one of the opening acts, Wu-Tang Clan (see below), just to stand onstage and provide some kind of legendary vibe sans microphones; and he let Whitney Houston’s version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” be his exit theme.
In a way, the show was a funhouse-mirror reflection of his creative activity and longevity. Lil Wayne’s first studio album, “Tha Block Is Hot,” came out in 1999, and he’s never taken a long hiatus.
And at least it showed more actual creativity than the performance immediately preceding it, by Pittsburgh native Wiz Khalifa.
Khalifa’s set was slick, for sure, and loaded with modern-pop hooks. But most of the real work came from his DJ, drummer, bassist and keyboardist, while the main man stretched his cannabis charisma over a skeleton of rhymes.
However, the most memorable song he laid out, “See You Again,” relied very heavily on Charlie Puth’s plaintive and prerecorded vocals and not much at all on Khalifa’s flow.
Wu-Tang Clan, by contrast, started the night off with flow to spare and rhymes to burn, which made sense considering they had at least a half-dozen snappy rappers, including RZA and Ghostface Killah.
Plus, tracks from early Wu-Tang albums like 1993’s “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” had the structure to stay rhythmically true and razor’s-edge right all these years later.
Because the members of the Wu-Tang Clan are very disciplined fellows.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lil Wayne shows his frenetic yet polite side at Milwaukee's Summerfest
