Whitman Pioneer

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Lil Wayne floods market with mediocre mix tapes

Columnists / By joeykern / November 27, 2009

What’s the name of that one song, again? I think to myself while stumbling through the world of legally downloaded music. All I know is that it’s a Lil Wayne song and that it has a sick beat, but these are two things I can’t type into a search engine with any degree of success.

My solution: Download the Lil Wayne discography, putting me on the level of middle school boys worldwide. I ignore this unfortunate connection, click download and walk away content that I’ll get what I want.

I come back to see my package completely downloaded. Thanks, bit torrent. I add the folder to my iTunes and watch in horror as 681 songs start the unfortunate process of relentlessly adding themselves to my library. I sit in horror and realize I’m that guy. I’m the guy who, when others view his library on a shared network, they have to scroll for five minutes to get to the ‘M’ section of his library. I hang my head in shame.

I can’t help but ask myself, then, why and how the hell does Lil Wayne produce so much material? Why is it that I only like about one out of every 50 songs he produces? Why do people like me feel the need to download all of these songs knowing 640 out of the 681 or so will languish, ignored, in my library forever?

The answer: I have no idea.

Lil Wayne has songs that are irresistibly catchy, and all-in-all just good to listen to. I won’t deny this fact, as it enabled me and countless other unfortunate souls to go about flooding their laptops with his countless mix tapes. But this does not justify the amount of shitty songs with which he floods the market.

It seems to me, Mr. Wayne, that you pretty much record anything one or two times through, call it good and then release it to the public. While this process may enable you to release an ungodly number of songs, it makes people have to sift through them for days to find something worth listening to. So, to put it simply, stop releasing so many songs and settle on the ones worth a listen.

By flooding the market, Lil Wayne has eventually ensured that some of his songs will inevitably become good and/or popular because, simply, almost no recording artist can release that many songs and fail to produce a decent single.

His methods seem akin to throwing 40 darts and praying that one of them lands on the target. It honestly makes me question whether he actually knows what a good song sounds like, or if his ears have grown so numb with cough syrup that he has to guess.

So my call to Lil Wayne is this: Start listening to your own songs and stop releasing so many mix tapes. Editing to ensure that published material is worthwhile has always been an important facet of media, music included.

Rampantly releasing material shouldn’t be the goal of any artist, as is the case with Lil Wayne. Being the most prolific artist of the generation amounts to nothing if half of the songs you release amount to wasted space in someone’s iTunes library.

Share this article
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Lil Wayne floods market with mediocre mix tapes was published on November 27, 2009 in Columnists and tagged with , , ,

About joeykern
joeykern

Speak your mind

Tell us what you're thinking…
and if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!

Login with Facebook

If you have a Facebook account and want to login with that information just click the Facebook Connect button below

Disclaimer

Please note we do not allow the publication of any defammatory or offensive comments. You are responsible for your own words, and may be held accountable for them should any individuals choose to pursue action against you. No personal information about commentors will be distributed, except when in violation of this policy.

Whitman College Pioneer on Facebook

Popular this week

Recent comments

  • joony: can somebody tell me where we can find infos on oscar buzz documentary american radical????
  • mike: Nothing sounded more fun than frisbee golfing … :( how about swim, bike ride, relax in a hammock reading...
  • MC: Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
  • MC: Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
  • petoire: “It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are...

All content is the copyright of the Whitman College Pioneer.
Staff Login