After Andre 3000 said it would be “inauthentic” for him to rap about anything since he’s pushing 50, Lil Wayne said he’s not ready for the hip-hop retirement home.
“I read a depressing quote or two from someone that I respect a lot in hip-hop and music, period,” Wayne, 41, said during an interview on the Friday, December 1, episode of Tyga’s Young Money Radio show on Apple Music. “They would ask, ‘Why you ain’t been doing music,’ and they was like, ‘Man, what am I gonna talk about? I’m in my 40s, like, what am I going to talk about? What you want to know about me being 40 and the life I’m living?’”
Wayne is several years younger than Andre, 48, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the Outkast rapper’s remarks. “I was like, that’s so depressing,” Wayne continued. “I have everything to talk about.”
Tyga, meanwhile, pointed out that Andre hasn’t made a rap record in nearly two decades. ”But I feel like that’s why you gotta stay in [hip-hop], though,” said Tyga, 34. I feel like you can’t be too far removed.”
Wayne admitted that he occasionally worries about aging out of the genre, but not so much that he wants to hang up the mic. “I also thought that may be a downfall of me staying in it,” he explained. “Because, at our age, you may hear what’s going on and feel [like], ‘I’m so out of that. I ain’t about to drop nothing.’ So, that’s why I say I don’t listen. I just go in my little hole. I love what I do, put it out, and hopefully, we swing for the fences, man.”
The quote that made the “Lollipop” rapper so depressed came from Andre’s interview with GQ ahead of the release of New Blue Sun, his instrumental jazz flute album. The LP is the first album of new music from Andre in 17 years (the last being Outkast’s 2006 album Idlewild).
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In the interview, Andre admitted that he has only recorded a few guest verses over the years because he’s not a prolific writer and it takes him a while to get words down. “Even now, people think, ‘Oh, man, he’s just sitting on raps, or he’s just holding these raps hostage,’” he said. “I ain’t got no raps like that. It actually feels … sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap because I don’t have anything to talk about in that way.”
“I’m 48 years old,” he continued. “And not to say that age is a thing that dictates what you rap about, but in a way it does. And things that happen in my life, like, what are you talking about? ‘I got to go get a colonoscopy.’ What are you rapping about? ‘My eyesight is going bad.’”
While Andre has retreated from the public eye, Lil Wayne has been a constant presence in the hip-hop world. He released his most recent album, Funeral, in 2020 and has been teasing the sixth entry in the Tha Carter album series since last year. Wayne also stepped in to replace Nicki Minaj at the Monday, December 4, stop of iHeartRadio’s Jingle Ball Tour in Chicago. (Minaj, 40, said she would still appear at the Atlanta and Miami Jingle Ball shows.)
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