Epic Weezy?

Backstory: I love Lil Wayne. If you've been in a vehicle with me this year, I've probably played a Weezy song for you, and you've probably had to induldge me as I raved about "how fucking BRILLIANT this one pun is!!!" All told, I have over 300 Lil Wayne songs on my iTunes. Not only do I think he's the weirdest, funniest, most creative and most troll-like rapper ever, I also think he's the most prolific stoner alive (two summers ago he was averaging about 3 or 4 songs a day, while being, in his words, "so high I could eat a fucking star"). And while I don't think Tha Carter III is his best work (Da Drought 3 from the aforementioned summer of 07 gets that credit), TC3 will still probably top my year end list, just as an honorary thing, like finally giving Scorsese an Oscar when he made the The Departed.

In the last couple years I've grown accustomed to reading similar praise for Lil Wayne, be it from The New Yorker, the Times, Slate or Pitchfork. The general message of these articles is that as long as you're self-aware and somewhat ironically detached, you can be a white nerd liberal elitist and still have love for Weezy Wee.

Unfortunately, 2008 has just been too good to Lil Wayne. He has the top selling album of the year, he's up for 8 grammys (more than Coldplay?!), he's been name-checked by the president-elect, and his auto-tuned-out (damn you T-Pain!) growl/croon has been featured in pretty much every "club ready" rap track released in the last six months.

So what does this mean? Well, if we look at the precedent set by the previous "best rapper alive", it means Lil Wayne is on a Collision Course with mainstream white America. And that can't be good for anyone involved.

What I present below are three "covers" of Lil Wayne songs, done by sub-par to terrible members of the 'alt-rock' genre. We'll start with the worst:

Jonathan Davis -- "Got Money"

Yes, that Jonathan Davis. This song brings up two questions:

1. Jonathan Davis is still alive?
2. Do you think he has a backwards 'R' on his keyboard?

I would direct you to his website where the song can be downloaded for free, but that requires that you sign up to receive emails from, well, Jonathan Davis:

Framing Hanley (??) -- "Lollipop"

This song may actually be worse than the previous one, but I had to give them extra points for the video. The music doesn't start until about 2:15, and before that you get to witness an emocore version of Can't Hardly Wait, where the super-tatted dude gets his pool mack on with the Vanessa Hudgens lookalike. Their conversation is like a bizarro-world reinterpreation of the dialogue from "the Sweater Song". Actual excerpts:

Hawt girl: I come here sometimes... to hang out with some friends... it can get pretty monotonous around here.
Lead singer: Monotonous?
Hawt girl: Yeah, you know... boring?
Lead singer: Yeah I know what you mean... it just seems that you'd kind of be entertaining... from time to time at least. So... you bored right now?
Hawt girl: No.
Lead singer: No?
Hawt girl: Maybe a little... (cue guitar playing "Lollipop"... wait, wtf?)

In case you couldn't stomach the entire thing, I can assure you that watching a Good Charlotte wannabe scream "CALL ME SO I CAN GET IT JUICY FOR YOU" is just as cringe-inducing as it sounds.

Travis Barker and DJ AM -- "Stay Fly/Lollipop/A Millie (Rock Remix)"

We all remember September 19, 2008 as the day the music (almost) died. Well let's be glad those boys are still around, because they've made the only listenable cover on this list. Mainly this just stems from the fact that it's not actually a cover, and instead just Travis Barker being really fucking good at drumming. Also, this song begs the question, what does DJ AM actually do?

(ps, I just now realized that Epic Mail is about to have two Travis Barker rap covers posted in as many days. That can't be good.)

Now all this rock-rap business would be bad enough, but unfortunately, Lil Wayne seems to have decided that he needs to return the favor. He's taken to playing guitar in between songs at his concerts recently, and although I'm not the best at assessing guitar-playing abilities, I can tell you definitively that Lil Wayne cannot play the guitar for shit. This is about as uncomfortable to watch as a Middle School talent show:

In conclusion, I have but one thing to say:

If it's Weezy and Weezer we're talking about, maybe segregation isn't such a bad thing.