Well, That Was Disappointing


It was inevitable. Nothing could live up to the ridiculous hype Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter III received. Personally, I was already getting sick of Lil’ Wayne, an artist whose work I had actually enjoyed during his Cash Money Hot Boys days, and the obscene amount of hype surrounding his latest release. Ironically, all of those feelings actually worked to lower my expectations for the album. Even with those MAD TV-esque lowered expectations, however, Tha Carter III still ended up ranking as a major disappointment to me (message to Wayne; go crawling back to Mannie Fresh now, your beat selection without him is horrible). I’m not here to give a review of Tha Carter III, though, rather I want to put it in perspective with some of life’s other great disappointments. I’ve chosen five big ones, so let’s see how Tha Carter III stacks up, or I guess in this case… down.

Finding out what your college degree is really worth – There’s a moment that happens to all of us a few months after graduation that I like to call realization. It’s the realization that the big money job, or any job for that matter, that you thought you’d have once you busted your ass and earned your degree, isn’t right there waiting for you. When most of us exit college we find the path to what we want turns out to be just as hard as before and end up working side jobs doing things we could have done as high school drop outs just to pay the bills. On the disappointment scale Tha Carter III, although very similar in that it came with a high expectation that was followed by a stunningly terrible actuality, isn’t nearly as bad as this. You never expected Tha Carter III to pay your bills (unless you’re Lil’ Wayne and according to current sales predictions he’s going to do just fine).

Finding out there was no puppy farm – For those folks out there who had a dog pass away when they were young they probably got the old “we sent him to a farm where there are big fields for him to run around and play on.” Eventually we grow up and find out there is no such farm and that our beloved pet had in fact passed on. On the disappointment scale Tha Carter III actually ranks worse than this because at least with the puppy farm story our parents were trying to soften the blow of news they knew was potentially traumatic. We were never given such emotional cushioning for what Tha Carter III would do to us.

Missing your train by five seconds – You run as fast as you can but you get there just in time to see the train’s lights as it pulls away from the station. If the train in question is a subway Tha Carter III is a much worse disappointment than this since another train will be around sooner rather than later. If, however, it was a Metro North train, and the last train home at that, it ranks as a far worse disappointment than Tha Carter III.

Your team losing in the playoffs – This always feels like a swift punch to the gut. A season that was filled with so much promise and that led to a playoff birth gets cut short, and usually in quite the painful way. Knicks – Rockets in ’94 comes to mind, as does Mets – Cards in ’06 (get the bat off your shoulder Carlos!). Tha Carter III can’t even come close to matching this kind of soul sucking disappointment.

The last episode of Seinfeld – Critically panned by most everyone, the last episode of Seinfeld saw the group of friends land in jail for not being good citizens. It was one of the few missteps in Jerry Seinfeld’s career as it’s one of the only episodes even hardcore fans don’t watch when it’s rerun on one of the thousand or so stations still carrying the program in syndication. When something that had been so historically good, and so historically popular, falls so short it’s a huge disappointment. Taking a look at the old disappointment scale, the last episode of Seinfeld narrowly beats out Tha Carter III. Although they had a similarly amazing hype machine behind them, Seinfeld had that aforementioned quality of being historically good. In the eyes of many people Lil’ Wayne was just building his credibility as an artist now.

So there you have it. A wide range of the disappointments we face in life and where Tha Carter III ranks among them. Of course there will still be plenty of people who buy into Lil’ Wayne’s hype, but not I. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few really good songs on the album, but we were told we’d be getting the next Chronic, when in actuality we got a lot of sticks and stems.

Comments

Homeboy Sandman said…
like i said before that picture makes me want to cry. a few weeks back the cover of timeout ny had the sex in the city chicks on the cover with duct tape over there mouths. it was like a ah "okay enough with sex in the city already" idea. zillions of feminists, looking out for the best interest of women, mailed letters in saying that the cover conjured up ideas of rape and abuse and all types of horrific stuff. they were right, but when i first saw the picture i didn't think of any of that stuff, and there's a good shot that the people who took the picture didn't either. but this picture, of the black baby with a tatted up face, screams, "gang," "prison," "hoodlum," "thug," all types of horrific ish to everyone that sees it! THIS IS A BLACK BABY! and the black community does nothing. how disgusting.

this article is dope though. i find the fact that black people stand by, and in fact actively support, the obvious media brainwashing of our children, aimed to make us as despicable a people as possible, making us infinitely easier to manipulate, much more dissapointing than all of these things. this album itself though, i never had any musical expectations for it. this album just isn't about music. that's not what it's there for. that's not why it' in everybody's face. it's there so that black children look up to little wayne. and grow up trying to be like him. making for a class of people ripe to be the financial underbelly and dregs of the economically driven society. i don't listen to that garbage and i don't stand for it being played around me. for those of you reading this, why do you?
Chilly S said…
Great writing as usual Adam. You are right on with the College Degree disappointment. I was unemployed for 6 months after I graduated college.

Just missing the Staten Island ferry late at night is a big disappointment - because you have to wait 1 hour for the next one. However, missing the 1:30am Staten Island Ferry, and falling asleep at the terminal is even a bigger disappointment. But by far the biggest disappointment is waking up at 4am because your pregnant wife has been frantically trying to reach you for hours to find out where you are because the last time she heard from you was at 9pm saying you will be home soon, and now it's 4am and she is worried sick and you realize you've missed 2 ferry boats whilst you were asleep at the ferry terminal next to a homeless guy is very very disappointing. Run-on sentences are disappointing but not so much as my previous example.

I get slack for the Chilly S Crying Baby cards that some of you might have seen. People say the baby is crying cuz I'm her father, or cuz I'm not home, but I tell them the baby is crying cuz you haven't been to the website (whoischillys.com) yet.
Mr. Ellington said…
Lil' Wayne is garbage and always has beem. He's a shufflin' minstrel and needs to be dealt with. Thank God for Public Enemy, Mos Def and NYOIL.
Lee said…
Tha Carter III is The Album About Nothing? C'mon Adam. No love for Mixtape Massacre known as Weezy?

I will admit that my Lakers losing will be more disappointing than this album. I did't expect much and really only liked that Go DJ song that he did. Oh well.

But I told you that he is gonna come for you and all mixtape deejays as well. Stay on the lookout!
Lee said…
By the way, I take the baby on the cover to be a photo of Wayne as a child and the tattoos are an added touch to signify that. Kind of like if someone had a photo of a baby with a mohawk and gold chains to be Mr. T.
kats said…
Lil' Wayne hasan album out...? I thought T Paine just decided to rap on a couple of songs on his new shit...I was wondering why he called it Carter III...?

And also...Homeboy Sandman is constantly saying really smart things that I hope people are paying attention to...
Admin said…
I'm not going to go in on that record. It's pointless. Homeboy Sand has some very valid points and Chilly S we ran to the ferry last night and just got on before it left for Manhattan. I'm not that bad of shape after all...
Coole High said…
Yeah Chilly, we ran like hell to that ferry and JUST caught it. In a sense, we avoided disappointment by simply putting in work (RUNNING). Sands, folk are too mentally lazy to avoid disappointment so they just LEARN to accept it when it comes, which is why our expectations seem to always be low when it comes to things in life. We should all just become brainwashers, it seems to work well here.

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