Hoping Hip-Hop signed a DNR order.

Hip hop is not in need of 'saving'. What hip hop is experiencing is the first generational shift. Gen X is losing its dominance in defining the music's direction. Wayne is part of Gen Y and simply is another artist of that generation who is more relevant to the fanbase. He'll attract Gen X hardcore fans still looking for a rap album to excite them. But most have moved on to living their lives without the need for a soundtrack fueled by the types of rhymes a 25-year-old with a perspective such as Wayne's produces. Put simply, he isn't saying anything new or saying the same-old in a new-enough way.

Perhaps you meant the industry is in need of saving? But if I chose, I could have downloaded Wayne's album back when it leaked onto hundreds of forums, p2p networks, blogs and torrent sites. This is the reality that the industry and the artists face today and a 'smash-hit' album won't save it.

Save your hyperbole, I'll save my money, and we'll see if Wayne can even save his relevance in a genre that is already migrating to something different than Wayne's stee.

Rap. Hip-hop. ZZzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzz......

You're too white to have an opinion. Please sit the fuck down.

is apparantly too racist to have an opinion. Nice comment. Now sit the fuck down.

Talking about Weezy like they're at the museum or the zoo.

This is Jess Harvell. He's written stuff. For, like, Pitchfork and Stylus and Stereogum and stuff. He's eminently qualified to dissect this record, more so than the Status Ain't Hood jocksniffers, that's for sure. And thank God the title is misleading - seems like Harvell comes to roughly the same conclusion I have: Weezy F Baby is a treasure unto himself, and hip-hop, like any genre, is going to have its share of clowns and geniuses. No one who's got an ear to hip-hop's earth is going to whine about needing saving - guys like Wayne (well, not like Wayne) pop up all the damn time to shake the game up. Wayne's part of a grand history of lyrical leftfielders, from Kool Keith to Bushwick Bill to Ghostface. He's going to have a hell of a career when it's all said and done, even if the highlights of 60 mixtapes and ten albums have to stretch to fit a 4-CD box set.

Lets face it no major MCs have brought albums out this year. We await Nas's and, Big Boi's for instance. Another thing to face? Lil' Wayne hurt his major MC status by not bring out Carter III sooner (Forget about the Leaks, he hurt the final product.)

In light of this set back, I thinks it is premature for us to tell who can save rap, or if rap needs saving at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is hip-hop the only genre suffering from unit sales? More so, do albums sales still equate to the distribution of an album anymore?

The moaning and groaning about the state of hip-hop(flagging sales, misogny, bling: its all the same to me) equates to what Kalefa Sanneh (former NYT Music Critic) called, while discussing the pop/rock genres, the "rockist" attitude. (Here the criteria for authenticity has to do with obscurity, the artist writing the songs and the ability to play one or a number of instruments. With such an attitude the Britneys of the world are deemed inauthentic musicians. Whatever. Unless you want to forget the Jackson Fives and most of that Motown you love.)

In the case of hip-hop, the "hip-hopist" attitude is more of variant and ambivalent. At present it is this very issue of album sales. A few years ago it was nostalgia for old school rap. Another one that seems to be creeping up is "the whole package deal", which Kanye West (as Jay-Z has suggested) is in the running for. (I can hear someone mouthing off, "I only listen to a brand, man".)

Deeming rap as a flagging genre may be just another euphemism of the hip-hopist attitude. Listen "Diva", if you can't accept the evolution of the game, (in Jay-Z's words: "a seed be becomes a plant, boys become men") then move on to polka.

I am happy to be surprised and learn from the development of hip-hop (its beats, its lyrical content, its fashion and its economics). That some hip-hoppists need Lil'Wayne's album to reach a milli'is sign of unnecessary desperation. In hip-hop terms a milli could just as well be a billi'. Lets face it, Carter III is a weak album. Listen to the mixtapes. Listen to The Leak EP. There you'll witness Lil' Wayne in all his lyrical glory.

But there's no saving to be done. Don't believe the hype, great albums came out last year. Its not inevitable they will this year, but hey, perhaps. For now why not hope and draw attention to what is truly praise-worthy(Salon's to do list:review hip-hop blasts from the past. Give us an education or if you like, a mis-education). Or simply lay low. Oh but I forgot even music reviews are supposed to feed America's diet of fear-mongering:"Oh my god gas went up and guess what baby, hip-hop's dead!"

...Hopefully not.

As others have written, who said it needs saving? Taking just one small example, look at the Def Jux label, which is stuffed to the gills with great acts... from founder El-P, to Aesop Rock, CanOx, and perennial great Del.

What people lament as hip-hop's downfall is nothing of the kind. It's just that the major labels, MTV, the NBA, et al, have been hyping the same misogynistic, bling-obsessed, thug-culture crap to the top of the charts for twenty years. That it's only just now reached a saturation point is truly sad. Mainstream hip-hop used to stay fresh by reinventing itself every few years. But it's been in a cavernous rut for a very long time.

Good hip-hop went underground (at least as far as pop culture is concerned) some time in the early- to mid-90s. This ain't 1986-1992 anymore, where the artists that are relevant and ground-breaking (Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim, BDP/KRS-One, etc.) are also the biggest sellers. Instead, since '93 or so, we've had a steady diet of essentially the same gangster rap that NWA, Ice-T, et al, pioneered twenty years ago.

Sure, it gets some nominal freshening-up--the beats, slang and flow--but it's largely still the same, and what change has come has occurred at a glacial pace. Lyrically, it's still "I'm hard, I'll smoke a fool, I gots b**ches and h*es, I got a Bentley/Lambo/Merc, I got blunted," blah, blah, blah. And after two decades, it's no longer novel or reflective of raw urban realities, it's just some label exec's idea of what sells.

Only in this context could someone as marginally talented as Wayne be positioned as a savior... forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but as emcees go, he's simply not very good.