The songs where he stops to catch his breath and gather his thoughts tend to venture toward the vaguely introspective, considering isolation, distrust, and love, and they produce most of the album’s sleepier moments. There is a breakneck speed to many of these verses, as if Wayne is so anxious to keep rapping that he can’t wait to get into the next one. Just take a look at this perfectly absurd sequence from the opener: “Drive-bys in a Winnebago/Snipers never hit a baby, crib, or cradle/Sit tomatoes on your head and split tomatoes/From a hundred feet away, now it’s a halo.” Listening to Wayne on Funeral is a bit like watching a skateboard trick compilation: He wipes out a few times but it’s always in service of some epic stunt and when he does land one, it can be awe-inspiring. His “Ball Hard” verse is a free-associative word game, bouncing from one character to the next until they begin to blur together. On the Mannie Fresh-produced “Mahogany,” which warps lyric fragments from Eryn Allen Kane’s “ Bass Song” into jazz scatting, Wayne bends in and out of shape around her interjections. He’s still a volume shooter, but like Rockets guard James Harden (who gets a song named after him here), his low-percentage play is offset by his high degree of difficulty, his ability to break the game with crafty maneuvers and extreme skill. Wayne’s down years were largely the product of a diminishing punchline-to-clunker ratio. Which is to say: funneling what is likely countless hours in the booth spitballing and freestyling into something coherent. With his rebound record finally liberated and the pressure alleviated, Funeral gets back to business as usual for Wayne. Wayne has said Carter albums are the only projects that require any specific preparation and focus, and that his other albums and mixtapes are simply born from his marathon recording sessions. Released at the conclusion of legal battles with his surrogate father and lifelong mentor Birdman, the album felt like the beginning of a second (or third) act.
Tha Carter V reestablished Lil Wayne as a force, answering many longstanding questions about his viability as an artist.
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