Lil Wayne

About an hour later, Wayne re-emerges and sees Stephanie off. It’s almost 2 am ”“ time for the studio.

With no traffic and Mr G driving exactly the speed limit (just in case), it’s a 22-minute trip from Wayne’s house to Miami’s Hit Factory. Studio C, which Wayne has rented for the year, is cosy and quiet, with the lights permanently dimmed. Like a Vegas casino, there are no clocks. Josh Berkman, a Cash Money A&R exec, says to hang with Wayne is to not sleep. Wayne greets Liz, one of the junior engineers. “Hey, lil’ mama. Can I get a coffee?”

This past year, something unusual happened: There was a shortage of Lil Wayne. He didn’t completely vanish ”“ in September, he released I Am Not a Human Being, a stopgap collection of B sides and posse cuts that was the first jailhouse Number One since Tupac ”“ but it still didn’t come close to matching sales of his Tha Carter III. Meanwhile, the less said about last year’s rap-rock album Rebirth ”“ aka his Birmingham Barons phase ”“ the better.

Wayne still resents the reception Rebirth got (he says critics “aborted it”), but he knows he can’t afford another misfire. He’s had to watch from the sidelines as guys like Eminem and Kanye have reclaimed hip-hop’s spotlight; even his protégés could plausibly claim to have more heat. In one WeezyThanxYou letter, he told Minaj that he was jealous of her and Drake; he followed with a “ha ha,” but it didn’t sound like a joke.

Now he wants his spot back. He’s prepping Tha Carter IV for an April release, maybe March if the promotional machine can gear up fast enough. He’s been in the studio with T-Pain, with Kanye. He has three or four tracks from before his jail stint that are too good to ignore; otherwise, he says, it’s all new.

In the control room, Wayne says hey to his recording engineer, a dreadlocked white dude named Mike Banger. Wayne used to go through engineers the way NASCAR drivers do tires, but for the past year, Mike has been his guy. When Wayne was in Rikers, Mike was on call, waiting by the phone in case Wayne wanted to hear music. He’d play him tracks from I Am Not a Human Being to approve, or new beats for him to write to. One time Wayne heard Jay-Z on a not-yet-released remix of Drake’s ”˜Light Up’ and decided he wanted to jump on it too. He called Mike, and dropped his verse the next night. (Sample line: “Behind bars, but the bars don’t stop/Recording over the phone, hope the call don’t drop.”)

“What we got tonight?” Wayne asks. Mike says there’s a Kelly Rowland song he needs to record a verse for, a Jeezy song, a song for Bruno Mars. But first Wayne wants to hear the guest verse he did for Chris Brown, a song called ”˜Look at Me Now’ ”“ “just to get motivated.”

As the track plays, Wayne bounces around the studio lip-syncing his lyrics. It’s a great song ”“ so great, actually, that now he’s thinking maybe he wants it for his own album. He’s pretty sure he can convince Chris to let him have it. There’s just one thing: “I cannot have Chris Brown rapping on Tha Carter IV.

“He ain’t sound bad,” Wayne says. “He’s spitting. But come on, man! Do you know how many rappers would be like, ”˜I can’t get on Tha Carter IV, but this nigga put Chris Brown on that bitch? Rapping?’”

“What about if you just took him off?” asks Scoob.

“You can’t take a nigga’s song and take him off of it,” Wayne says. “That’s saying a whole lot. That’s like telling him, ”˜I think this shit is hotter without you.’ I would feel played if a nigga did me that way.”

“What about if you swapped”¦”

“You’re not listening,” Wayne says. “Pay attention. Even if we swap ’em out, I’m gonna take the song and take him off of that bitch. That’s the ultimate fuck you. You can ask a nigga, ”˜Can I have this song, and you stay on it?’ But you can’t take him off.”

Wayne sticks his head into the hallway for a second. “Yo, Marley! Call that number I called earlier? No, the one on your phone. Them chicks? Let ’em know, you know, just wanted to see what y’all doing tonight. New pussy is always good.” (Sorry, Stephanie.)

Wayne turns back to Scoob. “I hear what you’re saying. But you can’t take a nigga off his own song. And I’m not gonna have Chris Brown rapping on Tha Carter IV.”

But it’s cool, he says. “I’ll just go off on another song. It ain’t like I can’t do it again.”

As if to prove it, he asks Mike to cue up a new track they’re calling ”˜Wayne’s World.’ It already has one verse and a hook; he’s about to write verse number two.

As Mike punches buttons, Wayne talks with Scoob about his evening. “I was trying to knock shorty down over there, boy,” he says, referring to Stephanie.

“What happened?” asks Scoob. “It-Ain’t-Go-Down syndrome?”

Wayne shrugs. “Kissing and all that.”

“Oof,” says Scoob.

“But I like all that too, though,” Wayne adds quickly. “I’m a romantical nigga.”

The track ready, the control room clears out. Wayne leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. An array of cigars and Vitamin Waters is strewn across the mixing board in front of him. By now, it’s 3:01. In the lobby, Liz brews up a pot of coffee. “This will go on for a while,” she says.

A long while. For the next two hours, it’s the same eight-bar loop, playing at full volume on nonstop repeat. It’s like the hip-hop cell at Guantánamo.

For a long time, he just sits there, listening.

At 3:55, he comes out of the control room and goes over to one of his assistants, a cute Tulane grad named Devin. “Hey,” he asks her, “Girl Scouts sell cookies, right?”

“Yep.”

“And Boy Scouts don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Ain’t that a bitch.” He goes back into the booth.

At 4:09, he emerges again, pouring himself more coffee. (No cream, lots of sugar.) He’s rapping now ”“ no words yet, just syllables, a cadence. “Da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da DA da.”

By 4:32, the ashtray is filling up, Styrofoam cups multiplying in front of him. He calls Scoob in, spits a couple of bars, and asks him what he thinks. He’s getting closer.

At 5:10, Devin, Marley and Scoob are all asleep, but Wayne is coming alive. He’s laughing to himself, nodding like he might finally have something. Suddenly, at 5:16, it’s go time. He yells to Mike, who races back to the booth, battle stations on a submarine.

“A-ight,” Wayne says in the booth. “Lezgo.”

It’s thrilling to watch the thing take shape. A couple of times he flubs a line, tackles it again. The whole thing is finished in about four minutes. Wayne signals for the playback and sits, eyes closed, listening to himself ping-pong from free-associating brags (“I’m a cash cow, now watch me milk this shit like cornflakes”) to parole-officer-baiting threats (“Keep that click-click pow-pow on the side like a mistress”) to straight-up silliness (“I don’t give a shit about shit, if it ain’t my shit, that shit ain’t shit, shit”).

“Goddamn!” he cackles when it’s over. He asks Mike to play it again, this time let the chorus ride. When the hook comes around, Wayne nods his head and sings along:

We ’bout everything and everything goes

Bitch, nigga, shit, bitch, take a picture

Tonight I’ll probably fuck another nigga’s girl

Party time, excellent, Wayne’s World.