First proper song since the Clinton years. The Lox’s, that is.

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[4.43]

David Moore: What sounds like a feature on a tossed-off freestyle — or, at best, a forgettable deep cut from the next Lil’ Wayne album (which it is) — is apparently the first major thing from the LOX as a proper group since “It’s All About the Benjamins.” (It hasn’t even been all about the Hamiltons in almost ten years!) So forgive me for the initial impulse of speculating about what kind of bagel Lil’ Wayne would be.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: If a GOAT finally comes back to life and nobody cares, does he make a sound? Despite a bit of rust, Wayne’s 2014 has been full of an inspiring return to form. Is he groundbreaking or inspiring anymore? No, but he’s truly enjoying rap again, playing with form and rhythm in a way he’d abandoned in exhaustion for the last few years while his progeny upheld his empire. Curiously enough though, it doesn’t matter, as most of the planet has written one of the greatest rapper’s ever off. It doesn’t help that obnoxious guitar, 2/3rds of The Lox punching in and a dull hook is making this song pretty dull. But with his supposed retirement drawing closer, its heart-warming to see Wayne wants to go out with a bang, even if nobody grants him their attention.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Jadakiss: 7. Wayne: 5. (And why does he sound like he’s aping Drake, now?). Verses: 5. Chorus (especially its production): 3. And honestly, I’m probably overrating this just on account of ‘Kiss.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Gotti references are so 2008, so Ross. What is Wayne doing with a go-nowhere vegetable metaphor and two dozen lines that go nowhere? Riding on Jadakiss’ authority, that’s what.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Gotti seemed to be a minor bureaucratic functionary who rested on the legend of his organization’s history to seem more menacing or more interesting than he actually was. It makes sense that Lil Wayne’s ’90s nostalgia quotes him. 
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Crystal Leww: I don’t want to pile onto the huge wave of critics whose gut reaction is to write him off entirely, but this sounds like arrested development. It’s a common problem with rap’s old guard: Molly Lambert detailed Eminem’s manchild syndrome yesterday and there’s a wave of hip-hop loving folks that have complained that Jay Z hasn’t made new music in at least a decade now. Lil Wayne in 2014 is better at nurturing talent on Young Money than he is on his own material, which has quickly devolved into a collection of the same tired ways to talk about giving and receiving head and dissing his rivals (which is sure, a hip-hop trope, but you have to have new punchlines or at least new ways of saying it). “Gotti” is the most lucid that Wayne’s sounded in a while, and for the briefest moment, he even comes close to sounding urgent. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to sustain him these days, made worse by an intense desire to bring back The Lox to the track, whose line trading that opens the track sounding  tense enough to bring at least some energy over this mostly sparse beat. I can’t imagine a world where this ends up on a final album cut rather than a mixtape, much less a massive radio sing. We are a little over half a decade removed from Tha Carter III, but it feels like so much longer.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Jada and Styles split lines like on “If You Know,” but I’d even take a Swizz Beatz afterthought over the production here, which sounds like a horror movie filtered through a basement door. They’re doing a vintage crimelord thing, which is great; Weezy’s stocktaking works too. He talks about coming up early, but he also references late bloomers, and I wonder how much of that is wondering how much he’s got left. Leaving out the shit jokes is simple subtraction; I guess we’ll see if V can add anything.
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