Lil Wayne is without question a man of both sustained success and lasting legacy. He's been honored with his own exhibit at the National Museum of African American Music on top of years of accolades and Wayne clones flooding the rap game. So in that spirit of nostalgia and history, it was heartwarming to see Lil Wayne host a high school reunion party for his former classmates at McMain High School in New Orleans.
Weezy celebrated the class of 2000 in what looked like a fun and wholesome event, where Weezy looks more like a part of the crew than a rapper surrounded by admirers. It's got to be crazy to have copied homework off one of the greatest rappers of all time, and to have seen his skyrocketing fame in real time. Now that the 40-year-old can take more of a retrospective look on his career and his beginnings, it's great to see that he's bringing it all the way back to his community.
Tunechi has also been seemingly applying that retrospective to other figures in his rap career as well. He recently told NFL player Marcellus Wiley that Jay-Z is the greatest rapper of all time while on his More To It podcast. Many would instead bestow that prize onto Wayne himself, including Juelz Santana. He called Lil Wayne "the best rapper in the world" when dismissing claims that Lil Wayne ripped him off.
“You know, especially these blogs and s**t, they try to separate or try to throw salt in the game," Santana said. "They love to hit me with the ‘Oh, Wayne took all this from you.' I be like, man, Wayne is a student of the game just like we’ve all been students of the game. So Wayne did exactly what he was supposed to do. Wayne studied every artist.”
“We all took s**t from each other,” he continued. “That’s my brother at the end of the day.”
Stay tuned to HotNewHipHop for more news about hip-hop history, the impact and careers of legends like Lil Wayne, and to see how the greatest rappers in the world are looking back on their monumental careers.