Lil' Wayne: Big, but not so easy

Holy hiatus, Batman. More than six weeks since the last post?? Where has the time gone?

Actually, I know exactly where each and every hour of that time went, but I won't waste anyone else's time providing unnecessary details about it here. All the while I've been jotting down tons of little notes, book marking sites, putting mental post-its on my forehead about all the things I meant to mention ... and yet only something truly extreme and totally unprecedented could jar me back into this blogging business:
This week's New Yorker feature on the New Orleans rapper Lil' Wayne.

Here's what I love about this feature, aside from the fact that a) it exists and b) Sasha Frere-Jones seems to agree with Lil' Wayne's assertion that he has trumped Jay-Z as hottest rapper in the game: The word "Katrina" doesn't come up. Not once. And two weeks before the second anniversary of the storm, even.

Granted, Lil' Wayne no longer lives in New Orleans, and a few weeks ago he made headlines for getting arrested for possession of a weapon and marijuana immediately after his sold-out New York show, so his identity is no longer tied to this city.

Still, there's something very validating in having a national magazine
acknowledge that New Orleans has for years had a thriving if largely scorned music business aside from jazz, one that rivals national rap acts (something hardly ever written about, much less celebrated, in local media).

It's also nice that a young black man from Hollygrove could make it into the news for reasons other than a fatal shooting.

It also almost makes up for the exhausting "New Orleans is doomed!" feature (actual title: New Orleans in Peril) in last month's issue of National Geographic. The graphics in that one, however, are pretty cool looking...).