Lil Wayne Stopped Writing Down Lyrics At 16: ‘It Started Becoming A Headache’

Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne On Why He Stopped Writing Down Lyrics At 16: ‘It Started Becoming A Headache’

Lil Wayne is one of a rare breed of rappers who can come up with full songs in their heads. But obviously, he used a pen and pad at one point.

The rapper, 39, recalled the moment he stopped writing lyrics down in an interview on the I Am Athlete podcast. He said:

“At like 16 or 17, I made a choice that I’m about to stop writing. Like, I’m about to stop writing my sh*t out. I had too many [thoughts coming at once]… that’s when that really started happening. I told you, I deal with that… the words keep popping up in my damn head, and that’s when it really started happening, becoming a headache, a real problem. That’s when I said, I’m not about to write no more.”

 

Lil Wayne decided to take all of his unused material and make a record out of that moment.

“Me and my homie came up with an idea,” he explained.

“He was a DJ. His parents taught piano lessons downstairs but in the basement, he had a studio. And they would let us go record up there … and we did this thing called ‘10,000 Bars’ where I just rapped. Since he was a DJ, we didn’t have to stop. He’d just put the vinyl up … and I’d look, and I read everything I had written, and you’d just hear all the pages flipping. I left all that sh*t on his floor. I don’t know what he did with it, but I left all that sh*t right there. That was the last thing I ever wrote, and it was called ‘10,000 Bars.’ We put it out for free.”

Lil Wayne once told Drink Champs that he tends to forget his lyrics “a lot” because he doesn’t write them down. But overall, he thinks it has made him a better artist.

“When I stopped writing I noticed that everything was realer now,” he said on Behind the Music.

“I can’t speak about nothing but what’s real because I can’t write nothing down.”

What are your thoughts on Wayne as a rapper and his ability to come up with his songs this way? Let us know in the comments!

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