Lil Wayne has to memorise the lyrics to his own songs prior to performing.
The hip-hop star made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night to promote his twelfth studio album Tha Carter V.
During the chat, host Jimmy brought up the rumor that Lil Wayne has penned nearly one million tunes – an idea that the rapper quickly denied.
“That’s not true because I don’t write,” he said. “I just go in (the studio) and how I’m feeling that day is how it goes. There’s always a different trigger, meaning sometimes it may be somebody else’s song and maybe a feature, they already have a subject. So, I just stick to the subject. If it’s mine, if the music is what it is, I go off the music.”
Lil Wayne, real name Dwayne Carter Jr., then explained that he needed to see the lyrics for his song Dedicate prior to his performance on the programme and that Jimmy’s producers were generous enough to help him out.
“Your guys are so so kind, so generous,” the 36-year-old smiled. “They typed up my lyrics for me, and so I’m back there studying them right now.”
During the chat, Lil Wayne also spoke about the reasons why it has taken so long for his latest record to be released after being delayed multiple times. The star blamed “business” and the fact that he was “kinda over my head at times”.
“I’m so into what I’m doing every day, my craft, that when I have to go too far into something else, I put somebody else in charge of it,” he noted. “When there’s somebody else in charge of it that messes up, everything blows up. And that’s how everything blew up. We just needed the debris to clear.”
He finally released the album late last month after resolving a legal wrangle with his mentor and Cash Money label co-founder Bryan ‘Birdman’ Williams over the album’s release and royalties.