Lil Wayne begins this album with the title track “Funeral,” describing in detail the scene of funerals, form the people there, to their reactions, to how everyone acts. Even all these years later Wayne’s story telling ability is impeccable. Following with “Mahogany” and “Mama Mia” where Wayne just raps, yes he still got it, without really saying much. His flow on these two songs comes and goes, coupled with mediocre beats that change and drop out at weird times, in what seems to be an effort to let Wayne rap without having to worry about being on beat. Follow these two tracks with the first album features of Big Sean and Lil Baby on “I Do It” is more of the same. All of them have great melodies with a catchy beat, however, with the exception of Wayne’s beginning of his verse, they didn’t get it done on this one.
“Dreams” is continuing the nightmare. The common theme through the first five songs is starting weak, having a strong second verse, then finishing exactly how we started. The next few songs are forgettable until “Bing James” featuring Jay Rock, but even in this case the weird beat drowns out both Wayne and Jay, who both had solid verses. There is a special ending to this song, which I honestly had to read from an article because at first I didn’t understand. Wayne honored Kobe Bryant by leaving 24 seconds of silence after the eighth track on this album.
Wayne gives you his classic deep thoughtful song “Trust Nobody” by enlisting the help of Adam Levine which so far thought this album is sonically the stand out track. Followed by another great song, “Know you Know,” Wayne and 2 Chains melody, flow and bars bring you back in after the disappointing first part of the album. Wayne brings out his classic flow for “Wild Hogs” continuing the strong middle of the album, minus the hook, which most likely becomes an instagram caption. “Bitch I’ma ball n dunk on whoever,” which is fitting as the next track is call “Harden,” the story of Wayne being heart broken and becoming hardened by his past situations with females telling them to “love me or leave me,” stating he feels her blocking his phone number is like “Getting blocked like a James Harden jumper.” This being a fair and ironic analogy considering he took a step back on the next song, especially when Takeoff come in the second verse sounding like he is rapping through a telephone.
R&B Wayne returns with help form The-Dream along with the classic R&B vibe track created by Mike-Will-Made-It and the Eardrummers, provides an incredibly well done song completely different from the rest of the project. This couldn’t be shown more true by the fact this song is sandwiched between two trap songs featuring Takeoff and Lil Twist, who I didn’t even know was still an active artist but has one of the best verses and flows on the entire album despite the fact he sounds exactly like a younger Wayne. XXXtentacion appears with another verse and hook doing what his fans loved him for. Creepy melody, dark sounds, screaming “Get out of my head” is a fitting song to have XXX on after his passing. That is followed by telling people, “I’m getting personal now,” however spending the entire song not getting very personal. “Never Mind” brings back the “How to love” feel with an acoustic guitar that has always accompanied Wayne’s voice and auto-tuned sound perfectly.
Overall this is a decent effort from Wayne. Giving his fans a little of everything. Anyone should be able to find a track to enjoy from this album. True Lil Wayne fans will find solace in a majority of the album being classic Wayne, straight rapping and free styling, while still giving the mass majority of music lovers the R&B, and radio tracks they can gravitate too. For me there are a few tracks with replay value, but for the most part “Funeral” was exactly that. A one time event that you have memories of but don’t necessarily want to revisit.
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