Lil Wayne was once inspired by JAY-Z to ditch the pad and when it comes to writing bars, but nowadays, he’s pointing to another reason.
During a recent appearance on FOX Sports’ UNDISPUTED, Weezy admitted that he doesn’t write down his lyrics anymore because he’s “too old and too tired” to be reading from a piece of paper in the booth.
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“Thank God for the iPhone. Before, I would have to remind myself all day because I don’t write nothing down. They always be thinking that it’s some type of achievement,” the 41-year-old explained to co-hosts Michael Irvin and Skip Bayless.
“No, I don’t write because I’m too old and too tired to be trying to read. You know, they got the iPhone now so I go ahead and record the voice memo.”
Watch Wayne’s comments at the 6:20 mark below:
Lil Wayne cited a different reason for his paper-less approach to writing raps while speaking to The Pivot Podcast over the summer. He credited JAY-Z with making him throw out his notebook early in his career after hearing that Jigga rhymed off the dome and didn’t jot down any lyrics.
“Like Biggie, love Biggie, love Jadakiss — I love all that shit, but Jay. The moment I heard it I stopped. You could ask my boy. ‘I heard that n-gga JAY-Z don’t write no more,'” he said.
“We went in the studio and we did ‘10,000 Bars’ and that was the last time I rapped anything off of a paper.”
The “10,000 Bars” track Wayne was referencing is a 35-minute song from 2002 where he spit the last of his written rhymes in rapid-fire fashion over an assortment of beats. The pieces of discarded paper were even picked up by the microphone.
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The New Orleans native also recently recalled another time when Birdman chewed him out for allegedly trying to sound like JAY-Z when he was rapping.
“When you find a favorite artist, you’re going to start sounding like them,” he told Rolling Stone. “It took Birdman and them to pull my ass aside and be like, ‘Bro, I’m tired of every song you doing sounding like damn JAY-Z. You’re not JAY-Z.’”
