And of course, there’s religion, which hangs over all of Mr. Lamar plays with familiar themes of personal responsibility, sociological darkness and, on “untitled 07 | 2014-2016,” his underdiscussed flirtatious side. For Lil Wayne, a few years past his prime, and struggling to regain relevance, it’s an opportunity to play loose on someone else’s field, accessing a level of creativity he’s mostly left in the past. Lamar, a rapper at the peak of his powers and reach, and one who resists many of mainstream hip-hop’s central preoccupations, it’s an opportunity to become even more insular. These are vastly different projects that serve a similar purpose: an outlet outside of the onerous narrative demands of the traditional album cycle. And for Lil Wayne, there was “Collegrove” (Def Jam), the new album by 2 Chainz, on which he makes several appearances. For Kendrick Lamar - possible inheritor of Lil Wayne’s “greatest rapper alive” mantle - there was “untitled unmastered.” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope), a collection of demos collected over the past three years, the era in which he went from connoisseur’s pick to mainstream star. Late last week, two rappers looking for ways to balance celebrity with freedom released new projects. From Drake to Lil B, self-released, nonalbum music became an essential career engine, and the norm. Whole generations of rappers began defining the pace and terms of their ascent outside traditional albums. Eventually, these samizdat drops - be they in the form of DatPiff downloads or SoundCloud links - took on the qualities of official releases. In so doing, he marked the beginning of the second wave of the modern mixtape era, in which artists began to wrest control of the pacing of their output from the hands of record labels, who preferred neat album cycles. Each year brought several dozen new songs, a sign of an artist obsessed with sound, and also with his own freedom to create.
2 Chainz is from College Park, Georgia, and Lil Wayne is from Hollygrove, in New Orleans, Louisiana, so Collegrove is the perfect title to reflect their collaboration.Back in the mid-late 2000s, when Lil Wayne used to refer to himself as the “greatest rapper alive,” music flowed forth from him like a geyser. The more guesses I take, the more anxious I get that I'm missing something cool and millennial, so how about I give you the real answer so we can get to the bottom of this? As it turns out, there's a simple explanation behind the title: it's a combination of the names of each rapper's hometown.
I'm excited to listen to it, but, before I even get to that, there's something I'm curious about - what does the album title ColleGrove mean? I definitely haven't heard it before, and I wouldn't even know how to pronounce it does that mean it's some new word the kids are using to describe their hoverboards or something? Or maybe it's the new shoes that Damn Daniel is wearing instead of white Vans? Do we even call him "Damn Daniel?" You guys, I am panicking. Not only did Kendrick Lamar do a surprise-release of his new album untitled unmastered., but Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz released their new collaboration. Wow, it really is an embarrassment of riches in the music world right now.