Funeral

A year and a half after the massively successful Carter V came Funeral, a record that appeared to be Wayne's last, with Funeral's cryptic title, spooky cover, and the dark themes of mortality and death that are somewhat explored on the title track. But right after, with the track Mahogany (a track that does have quite a good instrumental and a decent chorus from Wayne), Wayne leaves the potential interesting themes set up on the intro for, y'know, trap stuff. Money. Power. Prestige. Women. But not in our club.

And for the next twenty-two tracks, Wayne consistently hits us with boring trap song after boring trap song, with the occasional banger or occasional slow burner that does explore similarly dark themes of the intro track. I honestly think the reason why Funeral is so much more sleep-inducing than Tha Carter V, which also had a big length problem, is the trap angle of the whole record. Not only are the lyrics so much less witty than those of Tha Carter V's, but the trap production is just so much less interesting than the consistently above average production of Tha Carter V. At least with skips such as Start This Shit Off Right the production either carried a decent tune or incorporated vocal samples. With Funeral, the beats have nearly nothing going from them.

Funeral does start to pick up with the last few tracks, and the penultimate track T.O. and the closer Wayne's World (strange that it took Wayne over two decades to name a song Wayne's World but whatever) are pretty great, but overall, Funeral was yet another slog of a record bearing the Wayne seal of approval. Though this is labeled as a commercial album, you should treat this as your average Wayne mixtape. Pick your favorite tracks and leave everything else to be forgotten by time. There is no reason to go through Funeral from start to end.

Favorite Track(s): Mama Mia, Dreams, Bing James, Trust Nobody, T.O, Wayne's World
Least Favorite Track: Get Outta My Head