In 2008, my views on Lil’ Wayne were mixed. While I wrote articles like 10 “Simple” Reasons Why Lil’ Wayne Is NOT The Greatest Rapper Of Alive, I also wrote articles like The Three Most Memorable Verses Of 2008 (Which I ranked Weezy’s second verse on “A Milli” at #2). So me writing this article awarding Lil’ Wayne the coveted title of nappyafro’s Man Of The Year may seem weird since my views on Wezzy F. are so erratic (Remember this award is for Hip-Hop; otherwise I think a guy reppin’ Chi-Town not named Kanye had a bigger year and deserves it more). I think most people would find it hard to argue that 2008 wasn’t “The Year Of Wayne” (Including me). Let’s call off some of this years accomplishments for Weezy: He sold a million copies of his highly anticipated album Tha Carter III in the first week (Even after being leaked a full 2 weeks earlier), got 8 Grammy nominations (The most ever by a rap artist), worked on a documentary that will premier at the Sundance Film Festival, was a heavy presence at both the MTV Video Music Awards and BET Hip-Hop Awards, did commercials for both Nike & Gatorade, and of course, was the go to rapper for a cameo. And that’s only what I can think of off the top of my head. While Wayne is attacked for constantly flooding the market with new material, his work ethic of past years returned its benefits this year…in a big way. Yeah, I may think the quality of his current material is dropping (Did you HEAR Dedication 3?!), but I guess you can’t win them all huh? 2008 will go in the Hip-Hip history book with a lot of entries but the main one will be The Year Lil’ Wayne Became A Superstar. Now, as for 2009? I think he said he doing Rock & Roll or some bullshit like that…
