Pitchfork

Leave it to Lil Wayne. Whether or not it was a return volley in a beef started by 50 Cent, as some have surmised, Weezy's performance of previously unreleased track "Gossip" at the recent BET Hip-Hop Awards was as audacious as it was exhilarating. In this video clip from the awards show, the New Orleans rapper can be seen taking on the haters over a dramatic, string-soaked beat, in between Chipmunks-pitched Supremes samples.

By now Wayne's constant output can make it seem to casual observers like he's just opening his mouth and letting any old shit fall out. Which maybe he is, but obsessives know there are enough distinctive turns of phrase here-- delivered in Wayne's throaty growl-- to reward listening again and again. Wayne can resolve epistemological dilemmas with nose-candy puns, make pasta references as easily as drug references, and invoke the boxing metaphors that have inspired artists from Miles Davis to LL Cool J. He can also pledge love to his daughter's mother, huff and puff like a monster, and issue random, obviously scripted orders to cut the cameras. "I graduated from hungry and made it to greedy," Weezy says. But he's still "the rapper-eater," and 50 Cent might've just been served.

[Tha Carter III is due 12/18/07 on Cash Money/Universal/Young Money]