“Post Bail Ballin” is a dark, spacy rattler in which Wayne’s deranged delivery is as intriguing as anything he actually says. “London Roads”, produced by London on da Track, is a cinematic slow burner that has Wayne sounding focused, patient, and good-humored (“I swear every day I’m on my Ariana grind”).
FWA starts strong with “Glory”, a gospel-sampling swirl of out-of-nowhere pop culture references and a “no adlibs, no chorus” fluidity. Instead, he makes plenty of stabs at rejoining today’s reliable rap elite, if not through chasing trends, then through songs that show the power a Wayne track can still hold. “I Feel Good” isn’t exactly typical of FWA’s sound, even though Wayne evidently would have a ton of fun putting together a bunch of James Brown tributes. “I Feel Good”, a James Brown impersonation even more blatant than Mark Ronson and Mystikal’s “Feel Right”, should sound unoriginal for recycling such a widely sampled classic, but his joyous energy atop those horns is a welcome indication that he still gets a charge out of the physical, performative aspect of rapping. There are even occasions when he sounds thrilled to be doing so. There’s no guest rapper of major consequence until a jet-setting, wife-stealing Wiz Khalifa shows up on the album’s third-to-last song, “Living Right”, but Wayne can fend for himself most of the time. Unlike his mixtape material, he’s not retreading formulas by relying on established beats or verse structures. The answers were up in the air until as recently as the Fourth of July, when Wayne released FWA as a TIDAL exclusive. FWA, then, addresses some big questions: What does Lil Wayne sound like in 2015? Should he be making radio hits or sketching experimental new sounds for others to follow? Shouldn’t he be able to do both simultaneously?
This was especially true when it started looking like we’ll never hear Tha Carter V. Wayne wouldn’t be Wayne if not for his impeccable remixes on tapes like Dedication 2 and Da Drought 3, but after hearing him rap over the likes of “CoCo”, “Hot Nigga”, and “Try Me” on Sorry 4 the Wait 2back in January, fans started getting eager to hear what Wayne thought he should sound like as a rapper and a selector of fresh instrumentals. So, while the Free Weezy Album is technically his third project to come out since his 2013 album I Am Not a Human Being II, it’s his first collection of original songs since then. For better or worse, Lil Wayne still views the mixtape format as a place for him to rap over rented beats.