“Lil Wayne is a terrible guitarist. Just incredibly bad,†begins Pitchfork’s outrageous review of Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III this morning. “The fact was evident at this year’s Summer Jam, when he spent two and a half interminable minutes noodling and crooning all by his lonesome while a stadium full of New York’s most devout hip-hop fans looked on bewildered.†We weren’t at Summer Jam, but we did find this YouTube clip from a concert he played last November at which his fans seem overwhelmingly supportive of both of the notes he knows how to play, thank you very much. We’ll admit his technique is a little unstudied (in fact, he looks like he could probably use a few lessons on holding his ax), and, to the casual observer, it may seem like he’s more proud of his status as a guitar owner than as a person who actually knows how to get a sound from the thing — but does any of this make him a “terrible guitarist� Mostly we just think it’s really funny. Also, his solo on “Shoot Me Down†makes us smile every time we hear it, which is certainly more than we can say for most guitar solos these days.
Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III [Pitchfork]