@liltunechi @gqmagazine
First and foremost, let me give a shout to my Pop.  He’s held me down my entire life and only recently with the sudden loss of his wife have I realized just how great a job he did in parenting.  To be honest, growing up in Hip Hop its not hard for a father to get crowned a good parent.  With the high percentage of deadbeats out there, all he has to do is show up and he’s in the 90th percentile.  Hip Hop lore has been filled with stories of absentee fathers from B.I.G. to Jay-Z to Lil Wayne the list goes on.  And its not just confined to the music.  As a general rule, colored families are less likely to live without a father than with.  Sad but true.

So it comes as no surprise that Lil Wayne is so bitter towards his father.  In a recent interview with GQ magazine he shares his intense feelings surrounding their relationship.

“I ain’t afraid to put this out there, ’cause this is just how much I don’t give a fuck about a nigga, and I want people to see how you’re not supposed to be…”

This is a common sentiment and shared story

“I had a [big] show in New Orleans … I was parked at the hotel, and I saw him walking outside the hotel. Just walking back and forth. I’m like, ‘Look at this ni**a! You gotta be looking for me.’”

When approached by members of his entorage, Dwayne Michael Carter, Sr. responded

“Oh. I didn’t know y’all was here, I’m here waiting for this little ho to get off work from the hotel.”

Somehow I find it hard to think Lil Wayne would be chilling in a hotel in his hometown frequented by one of his pop’s skanks but I guess that’s the point. Wayne would later add that this was typical of his pops.  The animosity runs so deep that some have suggested that Weezies obvious addiction with tattoos is in some way a psychological subconscious way of altering his uncanny resemblence to his father.

“I don’t want to look like his ass, but I do.”

It makes one wonder just how integral a poor relationship with one’s pops is to the success of a rapper.  Ask most of them what’s a motivating factor and the vast majority will identify the absence of a father .  That’s not to say that as Hip Hop we’re not motivated by the big three “money, power and women” but it would create for an interesting scientific study to see just how many rappers are successful not only despite not having that positive male influence but rather…because of it.