Lil’ Wayne seems to have moved from a one-year prison sentence on Rikers Island to main stages at major arenas with very little wear and tear. Reviews from various stops on his I’m Still Music Tour are filled with superlatives about his sets, during which he plays many fan favorites including “Go DJ” and “Got Money,” plus liberally shares the stage with his musical posse.
| ONSTAGE |
| I’m Still Music Tour |
| » When: 7 p.m. Sunday |
| » Where: Verizon Center, 601 F St. NW |
| » Info: $49.75 to $200.75; 202-397-SEAT; ticketmaster.com |
“Remember how Diddy had his artists? And Jay had Roc-a-fella, and Baby had all his artists?” Wayne asked a New York crowd recently, according to MTV. “Well, I have all my artists.”
On this tour, those artists include Nicki Minaj and others mixing in with such notables as Travis Barker of Blink 182 fame.
An outsider might believe that the man known as Weezy, who is often hailed as the best rapper in the game, has returned to his preprison life with nary a change.
That’s not true, according to some who are inside his world. Even though he’s still as creative as he once was — working all night in the studio to craft his songs and offering riveting live performances — the post-Rikers Wayne is a gentler soul, some say.
“That’s one of the things he wanted to work on in there: learning to think things through and not just go off,” Wayne’s manager Cortez Bryant told Rolling Stone. “Lately there have been a lot of situations where he might have blown up before, but instead he’s handled it very cool and calm.”
Take hotel reservations, for example.
“When a hotel reservation is messed up and they don’t have the kind of room he’s accustomed to. The old Wayne would have been, like ‘We’re gonna find the nearest city with a suite!’ Now he’s like ‘It’s cool. I’ll stay in a king.’ ”
Apparently his concerts are still so energetic, though, that some in the crowd wonder if it could have an adverse effect on some fans.
Several Philadelphia 76ers went to a Lil’ Wayne show the night before a game, which had a noon start time, Sixers’ guard Lou Williams told Yahoo Sports. The team lost the game.
“We took a chance by going to the Lil’ Wayne concert,” he told the site. “You had guys that went that played well, you had guys that went that didn’t play well.”
While the concert’s effect on the players is debatable, all reports indicate that Lil’ Wayne is right on his game.
