Lil Wayne: I Am Not A Human Being II

I find it tough to keep up with the exceedingly prolific output of Lil Wayne, the controversial rapper to end all controversial rappers, a beef-starting jailbird whose 10,000-word Wikipedia page is so bizarrely sensational, it frequently gives tangible meaning to the term “jaw-dropping”.
In fairness, the New Orleans rhymer hasn’t made it easy for me; on top of releasing four albums in the last three years, miraculously squeezing them in around an eight-month prison sentence for gun possession, the potty-mouthed troublemaker is notoriously hit and miss, his tracks ranging from the near-iconic (see: ‘A Milli’), to the simply awful (see: ‘Prom Queen’).
I Am Not A Human Being II is the sequel to 2010’s rather good 13-tracker. So do we really need emotionless reworkings of indie non-hits (in this case, Jamie Lidell’s ‘Compass’) in which Wayne demands sex from another faceless groupie with lines like, “Should I call somebody else?/Cuz girl it’s almost 12, and this dick won’t suck itself.” He’s right of course. His dick won’t, but this album might.
Thankfully, IANAHBII isn’t all wince-worthy cliché, gun glorification and tawdry tales of cunnilingus (although, let’s not kid ourselves, that’s a massive part of it). Minimal instrumentation and stripped-back beats leave plenty of room for droning, earwormish hooks (‘Curtains’), stark grooves (‘Trippy’) and deliciously outrageous duets, such as ‘Rich As Fuck’, which finds Wayne and fellow rhymer 2 Chainz lyrically patting each other on the back for three minutes, punctuated by the ever-present sound of our monotonous host lighting up a blunt.
Then, unfortunately, there’s the bit where Wayne compares his sexual technique to firearms for an entire song, complete with sound effects (“My tongue go ‘Brrrrr’,” he mimics, “My dick go ‘Pah!”)
Weirder still is ‘Hello’, a supercharged throwback to Wayne’s guitar album Rebirth which is almost bonkers enough to be genius. Almost but not quite. Which is why I must file the exhaustingly vulgar IANAHBII away under Damn Shame, and hope that, next time, Wayne shows more than a flash of his best side.

Key Track: ‘Curtains’