Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Lil Wayne GQ Interview feat. Terry Richardson (photography)


From the outside, it seems like you’ve had a pretty incredible year this year. Kind of a breakthrough year. Does it feel that way to you?
Of course it was the biggest year of my life. Obviously. The VMAs were the biggest moment. That was the craziest, because I didn’t expect to do none of those things. Didn’t even contemplate once taking an award home. That was just over the mountain.

The payoff was sweet, of course, but the whole year has been mostly consumed with hard work. Everything that everyone see and notice, those things happen one day, one week, those things happen whenever. But I work every single day. I work every single hour. That’s what my year has been like. Work.

What about your album?
That was good. But there’s more to be done. People got to understand there’s no peak on record selling, there’s no limit, so you never reach your goal, you’re never satisfied.

And I expected to sell that much. Because I worked that goddamn hard. And it sounded that goddamn good. And that much better than everyone else’s.

So one of those working days, what’s it like? Your typical day.
A typical day for me? (To his road manager) Can I have a lighter? (Lights a blunt.) I get up, and if I’m not on the road or doing something like a photo shoot, I’m in the studio. I get up and eat breakfast, I have a great chef. The homies usually come over. We eat breakfast and shit.

My chef makes the same thing every day, just the full breakfast, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, sometimes waffles, fruit. Make sure that there’s everything you’re supposed to get.

You ever think about what happens when your record doesn’t open on top? Like where do you think you’ll be in ten years?
Nowhere. I don’t. That’s stupid. If anyone sees themselves in ten years they’re lying to themselves first, so you know they’re lying to you.

[A Lakers highlight comes on the flat-screen in the kitchen of his bus] Lakers my team. Cuz they got this creature on their team that’s unexplainably great, by name of Kobe Bryant. That’s just, just unreal. Until they don’t have him, I don’t understand why anyone else even play basketball.

[Then a LeBron highlight comes on the television] LeBron’s great, he gonna be better, because he’s younger, of course. That’s not even talent with LeBron, that’s magic. He may as well go on and tell everyone that he 35 years old, get it over with. He plays like a total man. He ain’t from Akron, he from Jupiter somewhere. Playing like that.

Speaking of Jupiter, you say on your records that you’re a Martian. What’s that mean?
Just out there, you know. Don’t like to think like everybody else, don’t like to try to think like everybody else, don’t like to do nothing everybody else think I’m gone do, don’t like to say nothing everybody else think I’m gone say.

I’m a Martian. I like to be different. And what’s more different than a Martian.

Seems at some point artists have to make the decision about whether they should be different or popular.
Not at all. It’s easy to be me.

That’s your first tattoo, right there, right?
My first tattoo is this tattoo right here, in memory of rabbit, it’s up to me. That’s my dad. He passed when I was 14, so I got it when I was 14.

How’d he die?
He got shot.

What were the circumstances of shooting?
Circumstances? Oh, right. None of nobody else’s business.

How did that affect you, you think?
I’m human. Affected me like it would affect anybody else I would imagine.

You close with your mom?
Very.

Where she living now?
None of your business.

Like what city?
None of your business. [laughing]

Okay. I guess we won’t talk about your family. What have you been up to this week?
I just came from L.A. I was doing a few things in L.A., closing a few deals out there. Did the commercial with LeBron. Other than that, I really been relaxing. I got a big tour coming up, so I’m trying to fall back until then. Come up with ideas for how that should go.

How do you keep track of ideas?
The good thing about that is that, thank God, I’m actually infatuated and in love with what I do, therefore I am what I do. So I never have to forget because I never have to remember, I just am. I don’t need to write stuff down.

What about your songs. You never write them down?
I just say it. Say it when it gets in my head, the beat. Whatever comes in my mind at that moment.

So it’s always spontaneous?
Of course. I believe anything other than that—then why go buy it? Then you could do it, she could do it.

I couldn’t do it even if I wrote it down.
But you could read what’s on the paper, right? So basically anybody that could read could recite it. That takes something away from it. But if I walk up to a guy and say “Rap for me,” he’s going to say something. His characteristics or whatever. I’m going to get what I love about him, just from his presence. That’s why you never saw me rap no TV shows. Other rappers be having to rap after an interview. So can you spit something for us? They never ask me to do that because the interview is so compelling that they actually got Lil Wayne.

I always tell somebody that’s why I am good, that’s why I’m okay, because I’m being me, I’m doing me. Now the day I gotta write stuff down—no one can believe what’s written down. Perfect example: If I was a bum and I told you I had a mansion around the corner and three Bentleys and twenty-eight bitches in my house butt naked waiting for me, you wouldn’t believe me. I’d say you stink, say Get out my face, give him $100, and say Get the fuck.

But if there was a book that said, there was this bum with a mansion with twenty bitches in it, you’ll try to use it and put it toward real life. That’s why I don’t write nothing down. That’s why I don’t believe the Bible, nothing that’s written, because nothing that’s written is to be believed.

So you don’t believe in books? Seems like you do a little bit of reading. Your raps have references to all sorts of stuff.

Read the full article right here..... -----> GQ.Com (It's inspired me to wanna be interviewed ALL THE TIME if I ever got famous LOL)

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