Dammit now the fucking sky's showing!

So a couple months ago basically I said pretty much everything in music was either boring or not at the level I normally expected from certain artists. Like Andre 3000 would say:

Kinda sour, 'cause my favorite group ain't coming with it
But I'm witcha 'cause ya prolly going through it anyway
But anyhow, when in doubt, went on out and bought it 'cause I thought it would be jamming
But examined all the flawsky-wawsky
Awfully, sad and its costly

But here at the close of 2009, a couple of noteworthy releases have come out to change the game up a bit.


The good folks over at TheSmokingSection put me on to the new mixtape from Cash Money boy Li'l Wayne (Weezy F. Baby himself) , No Ceilings. While a mixtape from Weezy is as common as a sports star cheating on their spouse or a politician soliciting a prostitute (people were shocked about the Tiger thing. Really? He's a rich dude. Rich dudes cheat. Which is why I laugh when women say they want to marry rich--HE'S GOING TO CHEAT ON YOU.), I was caught off-guard once I learned this one was actually good.

I'd heard things about Weezy on mixtapes before, but I'd never really wasted the time to check any of them out. And The Carter III was the epitome of mediocre last year so I was in no rush to spend an hour plus of my time to see what the hype was about. (I fell for that before and it ain't work out for me. Shout out to Ryan Leslie. © Foxxhole)

Anyways. SmokingSection devoted a full Notable Quotables to Wayne's No Ceilings mixtape, so after reading roughly half of it I decided to go ahead and see if the hype was deserved. Obviously I believe it is, or I wouldn't be writing this.

And rather than go into detail, I'll just link you to the very much free mixtape:

Li'l Wayne - No Ceilings

Enjoy folks.

Now, at the same time, one of my favorite rappers ALSO released a mixtape. Lupe Fiasco, who's third album Lasers is highly anticipated by me if no one else, recently dropped the mixtape Enemy of the State.

Stuffed with more lyrical wordplay than Wayne but fewer punchlines (meaning you wind up doing the rewind more than going, "...Oh snap!"), Lupe's album is one-third the number of tracks but you'll end up listening to it a lot more times while you catch all the meanings he laces in each bar.

Check it here.

I got more links for you for different things, but we'll come to that a little later.