Lil Wayne dropped his new album Tha Carter 6 last week and fans still don’t know what to make of it. The official subreddit was in shambles the day it launched, with many posters dismissing it as ‘trash’ and his worst work since the rap-rock catastrophe, Rebirth. There were the acknowledged bangers like Welcome to Tha Carter, Hip-Hop, Banned from NO, and Cotton Candy. But there were also indefensible duds like Island Holiday and If I Played Guitar.
If you’ve listened to Tha Carter 6, you might have been expecting a third track to show up in that list of indefensible duds. Except, you know what, I’m defending it. Peanuts 2 N Elephant, which has been a lightning rod for fan discontent, is one of my favorites on the album.
Peanuts 2 N Elephant: A Measured Defense
The track, which takes its name from the part in his hit 2011 single 6 Foot 7 Foot where Wayne says the competition is “gelatin, peanuts to an elephant,” would be unanimously considered one of the album’s better tracks if not for its beat, which many fans consider goofy. Wayne is rapping like the rent is due, it just so happens to be on a really silly-sounding backing track.
A fan proved the point byputting Weezy’s vocals on their own instrumentalto plenty of upvotes.
Peanuts 2 N Elephant was produced by — and I’m not kidding — Lin-Manuel Miranda. Did he skip writing songs forMoana 2so he could cook up a beat for this Tha Carter sequel instead? Probably not, but it’s fun to imagine. The Broadway auteur behind Hamilton and In the Heights, the children’s musician behind Mufasa: The Lion King and Encanto, in the booth with Lil Wayne.
Peanuts 2 N Elephant gets an immediate, visceral response from a lot of listeners because the beat is loud, goofy, and follows immediately after the heavily autotuned ballad If I Played Guitar. The acoustic guitar fades out, and this song kicks off with an elephant’s wail, then its springy beat and snaking bass kick in, making a solid half of the audience transform intothis meme.
Crash Bandicarter
Many fans have compared its beat to the soundtrack to a Crash Bandicoot level, and oneeven put the song over Crash gameplay. Those people are absolutely right. Itdoessound like something composer Josh Mancell would have cooked up forNaughty Dog’s original PS1 trailer.
Wayne makes the video game connection more explicit with a reference to Knuckles fromSonic the Hedgehogin the first verse.
But here’s the thing: the video game-y-ness is why it rules.
Lil Wayne is a playful rapper. He loads his tracks with punchlines, he does silly voices, he famously said that “real Gs move in silence like lasagna.” Though his songs are full of violent references and he spent eight months in Rikers Island on weapons charges, his demeanor isn’t self-serious. That humor is what made him one of my favorite rappers when I first heard Tha Carter 3 in 2008.
Other huge rappers of his generation are often silly, too, but tend to get serious and spit about things that actually matter to them much more often than Wayne. Sad songs about failed relationships make up a solid 50 percent of Drake’s discography. Kanye has a whole album devoted to the heartbreak of his mother dying and his relationship imploding. Eminem made Like Toy Soldiers, a song about the real-world impacts of a rap feud, and Cleaning Out My Closet, about his father abandoning him and his mother abusing prescription drugs.
And, you know, several tracks about murdering his wife.
Wayne Takes Craft Seriously
It’s hard to know what, if anything, Waynereallycares about. He’ll occasionally get serious about his hometown, New Orleans, or about his mother. But those are a handful of outliers among the thousands of tracks he’s put out since he started rapping in the ’90s.
In 2007, he recorded a track called P***y Money Weed, and that’s always felt like a shorthand guide to his favorite topics to rap about. He’s someone who can spin the most impressive verse you’ve ever heard out of pointless hedonism. He’s here for a good time, and just so happens to have been in the game for a long time.
All of this makes Wayne feel kinda like a platformer mascot. He works hard — especially during his legendary 2000s run. He takes his craft seriously, cooking up wicked internal rhyme schemes and flowing better than just about anyone when he’s at the top of his game. But you get the sense that he isn’t taking any of this too seriously. And if you’re a Crash Bandicoot fan who has spent several hours braving a tricky level, you know that accomplishing something difficult can still be fun.
That’s why I like Peanuts 2 N Elephant. It feels like it nails something essential about the Weezy persona that hadn’t, until now, been fully captured. He’s spitting like his life depends on it, but on a track that sounds more like he’s parked in front of the PS1. But that dichotomy is the heart of Wayne. He’s a comedian who takes his act deadly serious.
