Lil Wayne’s Next ‘Dedication’ Mixtape

Lil Wayne says that he is working with DJ Drama on Dedication 6.

During an interview with DJ Drama, the rapper said that he and Drama will collaborate on another project and that “we just didn’t have a good name for it yet,” adding that “it might as well just be a Dedication.”

This is particularly exciting news because DJ Drama had teased the mixtape over a year ago, with no confirmation from the rapper.

The Dedication mixtape series is widely regarded as Wayne’s best mixtapes, with Complex ranking Dedication 2 as the tenth best mixtape of all time, as well as Wayne’s personal best. The series has not seen an installment in the last 3 years, the first coming in 2005 and the latest coming in 2013, but there is no lessening the impact of the series as it helped shape Wayne’s career.

“It became a different approach to the music,” he explained. “Meaning I started no longer wanting Drama to put out only the songs I’m doing my own little remixes to. I started giving him original music. I started approaching mixtapes as they’re actually getting a little more recognition than the albums.”

These tapes are also important hip hop artifacts as they allow us to trace Wayne’s progress as an artist. You can see his shift from street rapper, Dedications 1 and 2, to the auto tune user in Dedication 3 to the more commercial radio rapper of tapes 4 and 5. This next project will show us which Lil Wayne we will hear for the foreseeable future.

“If I’m gonna put out a mixtape, I want it to be classic,” he said. “I want it to be something you can listen to ten years from now, just like when I walk in, I meet people, and they be like, ’Damn, Dedication 3, I still listen to that every day.”

Hopefully Wayne delivers on his expectations and lives up to the series name.