New Orleans, Louisiana rapper Lil Wayne whose government name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. is only 34 years old and has impacted pop culture tremendously already. He has done this through his style of mixtapes, specifically his “Da Drought 3” Mixtape. He created his own label “Young Money” which has basically taken over the rap industry and his style of fashion has spread throughout the urban community like wildfire.
Lil Wayne grew up in a poor section of New Orleans, known as “Hollygrove” and was ultimately raised by only his mother because his father abandoned the family after his parents’ divorce when he was 2 years old. Lil Wayne has been rapping since he was 8 years old and officially begin his career in 1997 as a member of the group “Hot Boys.” Lil Wayne’s mainstream success began in 2004 when he released his hit album “Tha Carter.”
Lil Wayne impacts pop culture because he inspired a plethora of new day rappers to chase their dreams. Lil Wayne has influenced the style of rap tremendously. He himself has veered away from the traditional style of rap that started off as somewhat storytelling with a beat behind it and turned it into something so much more creative. Lil Wayne is a lyrical genius because of the way he can create a song by literally just throwing punchlines together and making it make sense is iconic, no rapper before him has done this. In today’s music and rising artist, you see these same traits incorporated in their music, they tend to use more punchlines instead of storytelling.
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One artifact that you can look at is Lil Wayne’s Mixtapes, specifically “Da Drought 3” mixtape. Wayne was one of the first artist to release free mixtapes to get his music to the public. In 2003 when Cash Money Records, the label he was working under, was going through financial troubles instead of him dropping his album “Da Drought” as an album he decided to release it as an underground mixtape. After the mixtape developed so much buzz he decides that he would continue to release mixtapes to create anticipation for any of his future albums. Nowadays almost all rap artist use this method to get their music out to the public and build a fan base. Not only does Lil Wayne just release mixtapes, the style of his mixtapes is different, instead of him using his own beats he just freestyles and make remixes of other popular songs that are out at the time.
After Lil Wayne's first couple of mixtapes, he changed his approach, he began to freestyle on other musicians who had hit songs instrumentals and use those songs for the mixtapes. This style began on his famous mixtape “Da Drought 3” which he released in 2007 after his “Like father, Like son” mixtape. This was a two disc mixtape with a total of 29 tracks. On this mixtape, he went on to sample multiple songs for instance, on his intro song on disc 1 he samples “This is Why I'm Hot” by Mims. Then he sampled, “Black Republicans” by Nas and Jay-z and continued with other samples from artist like Beyoncé, Rich Boy, Mike Jones, Yung Gunz, Dj Khaled, Nas, T.I, Cameron and Ciara. On disc 2 Lil Wayne also sampled, Young Jeezy, Young Dro, Jibbs, Jim Jones, Cam’ron, Unk, Swizz Beats, Lil Boosie, Young Bloodz, Juelz Santana, Jay-Z, Gnarls Barkley and Robin Thicke. On both disc, most of the tracks he changed the title of the songs but on others he let the title stay the same as the original song title for example, “Upgrade” by Beyoncé he just went on to let the title of the song on his mixtape to stay as “Upgrade” then on other samples like “Throw some D’s” by Rich Boy he changed the title on his mixtape to “Put Some Keys on That.” In each one of the songs on the mixtape he used word play from the original song and just freestyled on the entire beat instead of using the ABA format which is known as the traditional verse chorus verse chorus style of song. By doing this Lil Wayne paved the way for other upcoming rappers to do the same thing. They now just use other artist beats and make it into their own song. For example, in recent 2016 album artist, JCole, uses Bryson Tiller’s beat in the song “Déjà Vu” and turned it into his own song.
The mode and media for Lil Wayne’s Da Drought 3 is digital/audio because you could stream and listen to the mixtape online on various websites. The audience for the mixtape is his fans and other rap/hip-hop listeners. Lil Wayne’s purpose of this mixtape was to build hype and anticipation by showing how good of a rapper he is which ultimately will persuade his fans and other listeners to buy his upcoming album since he can almost guarantee the music will be good. This makes the genre of the mixtape persuasive and the rhetorical appeals used is pathos and ethos.
Lil Wayne's label Young Money Entertainment which was founded in 2003 also makes him a pop culture icon because without it we would not have music from top artist that he has signed to the label like Drake and Nicki Minaj who both have made it high on the hip hop charts. This label also produced multiple top songs that included a variety of Young Money artist all on the same track. The album “We are Young Money” alone produced three hit singles, Bedrock, Every Girl, and Rodger That. The Young Money label has also become like a trademark. People go out and buy accessories that have the Young Money logo on it and advertise the brand.
Young Money Entertainment is a visual, audio and written mode using digital and physical media. The reason being is because the label comes out with music video that you can stream online, they release the lyrics of the songs and you can physically purchase accessories with the label’s logo on it. The audience Young Money appeals to is their fans and other people that keeps up with the music industry. The purpose of the label is for each artist signed to the label to appeal to different listener’s emotions through their style of music and public behavior. This ultimately convinces those fans who like certain artist that are a part of the Young Money label to try out other artist that is also signed to the label and potentially become a fan of Young Money instead of just one artist. Another purpose of Young Money Entertainment is to show that they are a credible/reliable source of music and entertainment. The genre is persuasive and the rhetorical appeals used is Ethos and Pathos.
As a pop culture icon Lil Wayne, has also been able to change the urban and hip hop's culture's sense of fashion by simply being himself. His whole career he has not had a problem with standing out being unique. He started off when he decided to turn his entire body into basically a canvas and covered himself in various tattoos. Now that image that rappers need to have a plethora of tattoos has spread you see increasingly tattoo covered artist entering the mainstream. For example, look at artist like Soulja Boy, Young Thug, and Wiz Khalifa they are all filled with tattoos just like Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne also promoted the skater image in the hip hop community. He was able to make the skater look “cool”, before him rappers and “thugs” did not dare to wear anything too tight or of the skater brand without being judged. He even managed to turn the hip hop community onto his clothing brand “Trukfit” which he launched in 2012.
Lil Wayne made it cool for the young African American urban community to skateboard. Before he came around and began skating and showed interest in the skating world no one else in the urban community did. Now you see new artist like Lil Uzi Vert skating just like Lil Wayne. Even before the skating and making it cool for artist to be covered in tattoos Lil Wayne popularized the idea of “bling.” Some even say that he is the founder of the slang term “bling” because of the hit song he made with his former group the hot boys “Bling Bling” back in 1999. Lil Wayne even went as far as covering his teeth in “Bling.”
The mode for Lil Wayne’s style is visual because you can see his style with your own eyes. The media is digital being that you can look Lil Wayne up online and see photos of him. The media can also be physical because you may see him in person at a concert or anywhere else. The audience for Lil Wayne’s style would be the youth, the urban community, and his fans. The sole purpose of Lil Wayne’s style is to show the youth and urban community how to dress and also determine what is acceptable amongst the community. The genre is informative and persuasive with Logos and Ethos rhetorical appeals.
After analyzing these three artifacts you can see why Lil Wayne is a pop culture icon. He has introduced us to various things that we see being utilized increasingly amongst new artist, from their appearance to the style of their music. Lil Wayne has introduced us to some of the top artist in the game today and had proven why he is a great pop culture icon by doing so. At the end of the day Lil Wayne is a positive icon in the hip-hop and urban community being that he inspires the youth to follow dreams and be creative.
Why Is Lil Wayne Iconic?
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Reflection
Choosing my pop culture icon was probably the most difficult part of this project. When we first got assigned the project I immediately knew I wanted to do it on a Florida rapper like Ice Billion Berg, Major Nine or Kodak Black. When I began my research on these three artists I realized even though they are on the rise and beginning to make their brand they did not have three big enough artifacts to write an entire paper about it. At this point I had to rethink my whole plan. I was constantly going back and forth with myself about what I wanted to research now. After looking up different brands I came to the conclusion that I did not want to just research anything or anyone randomly, I specifically wanted to do the project on someone who influences the urban community. Eventually it clicked to me, I might as well do the project on Lil Wayne because, one he comes from the urban community, two he has been around long enough to have his brand established already and three he is one of my favorite rappers. Now that I had finalized what pop culture icon I was going to use it was a matter of figuring out what was the biggest three artifacts I could use about Lil Wayne. This part was rather easy because I knew no matter what I had to talk about his Label, Young Money Entertainment and his skater image being that those are two big things about him. I brainstormed about Lil Wayne for a while that’s when I came to the realization of how his style of music have influenced newer rappers. When I began researching more about Lil Wayne’s style of music I noticed it began to change with his “Da Drought 3” Mixtape and instantly I knew that would be my third artifact. It was pretty much smooth sailing at this point. With hours of research the paper pretty much wrote itself, I had more than enough information about Lil Wayne to prove how he was a pop culture Icon. After successfully writing my first draft of this paper and going to my conference my professor pointed out the fact that I had finished writing the project but it was not written in third person like instructed. Going back changing the paper from first person to third person before the final draft was sort of a challenge being that I did not have much experience with this type of writing but once I got the hang of it, the project was all good I realized writing in third person is just as easy as writing in first person.