Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 08/24/2011 at 5:07 PM Reviews

The Popdust Files: drake, it's good, Jadakiss, lil wayne

Much as we love ’70s and ’80s conceptual rockers The Alan Parsons Project here at Popdust, chances are, if you’re prominently sampling them for a hip-hop song, it’s not going to be of the club banger variety. “It’s Good,” the latest cut to leak from Lil Wayne‘s upcoming Tha Carter IV album, sees the Martian, along with special guests Drake and Jadakiss, slowing things down over an impossibly somber sample from the Project’s “The Cask of Amantillado“—named after an Edgar Alan Poe short story, of course—and maybe attempting to get introspective, though with Wayne and friends, true introspection can be kind of sorta hard to come by.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCgxt564oS0

Of the three rappers on the song, Jadakiss, up first, probably has the most success matching the tone of the beat. “Think life is a game / But all you get is a turn,” raps Jada. “You live and you learn, either you freeze or you burn.” Jada loses points for a time-killing/watch-damage pun (“Shoot me in the watch / I got time to kill,” a borrow from Weezy’s own “I get money to kill time / Dead clocks” off the same album’s “John”) and for reminding us of the forever-ongoing NBA strike (“Ain’t no collective bargaining on cocaine”—thanks, Jada), but at least he appears to be taking things seriously.

It’s more than we can say for Drake and Wayne. Drake recycles his general Woe is Me themes of being unsure of himself (“Mind in one place / Heart in another”) and wondering why haters gotta hate on his fame and fortune (“They telling lies about me / I musta made it”), and takes the time to awkwardly celebrate his friend’s release from incarceration (“Watching all these kids who thought they had figured it out / And the November came, they let my nigga out”), something we feel like may happen multiple times across Tha Carter IV.

It’s still better than Weezy’s verse, which subsists mostly of bizarre brags about his sexual conquests (“Pussy good as baby powder,” “Nigga I’m straight, my girl a faggot” (???)) and unnecessary pop culture references (“Niggas act like bitches / Shanaynay oh my goodness,” “I just throw the alley-oop to Drake Griffin”). Maybe it’d come off as amusing over a more jovial-sounding beat, but with Parsons and company plodding in the background—”Cask” even plays unedited for the song’s first 25 seconds—it just sounds uncalled for. And “She Will” was so promising.

POPDUST SAYS:
[starreview tpl=16]