PopScreen: Lil' Wayne, "Shooter"

I bought Lil’ Wayne’s “Tha Carter II” after being floored by his “Gangsta Grillz, Vol. 1” mixtape, and also out of curiosity as to whether he actually might be the best rapper alive, as he often proclaims. While he doesn’t have the technical skill to back up that claim, “Shooter”—bursting with simple but ultracharismatic swagger—shows that he just might be the best MC alive.

Buried 16 songs deep into an 80-minute album, the glorious bloody mess of “Shooter” makes every other album track look like a bodyguard, a member of the faceless posse that accompanies any shining star. So why does the music video hold it back so grotesquely?

Directed by Benny Boom, this expensive, cowardly straightjacket of a video turns the epileptic Lil’ Wayne and his soul-infused partner Robin Thicke (“he strapped”) into… a tenant in a yuppie apartment complex.

In no way does this video fit the song. Where is the casual violence? The chaos? The attack on everything and anything civilized? Where is the condensed 100-year musical history of the South?

Nowhere to be found. I expected bodies on the floor and uncontrollable balling on a legendary scale. I expected an unstoppable force of screen-pimping that would put D’Angelo to shame. Instead, the greatest four-and-a-half minutes in crossover hip-hop since “Walk This Way” has been mutated into an alternate universe McDonald’s commercial.

Now when Thicke wails his head off out of nowhere about a “shotgun surprise,” the raw impact is replaced with a soft shot of the singer looking introspective—as if there was anything subtle or sensitive or in the least bit unmanly about the song. Weezy’s breakthrough “oh snap, he’s still going” Public Enemy-style final verse is accompanied by a “humorous” interlude involving a pizza deliveryman.

It’s a surprise that they didn’t put in a laugh track. I expected Matt LeBlanc to show up. Only a Jazze Pha vocal appearance would be a greater affront to such a musical masterpiece. What a shame.

—J. Samuel Abbott