Danny Alexander writes:

Track #14 on the enhanced version of Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter III is not yet nor likely to be a single (of course, I never thought “Born in the U.S.A.” would be either, so what do I know?).  But it isn’t technically a part of the album either.  It’s called a bonus track, a part of and separate from.
 
“Single-Minded” might be the adjective for why I chose to write about this song because it isn’t my favorite piece of music on the album.  That designation might go to either of the two wings of the album’s climactic flight—the tribute to New Orleans, “Tie My Hands,” leading to the transcendent “Shoot Me Down,” or it might go to the catchy answer record to Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” “Comfortable,” or the sketch comedy of “Dr. Carter.”  Hell, I think the randy ear candy of the single “Lollipop” deserves its place somewhere by “Louie Louie” for actually being both fun and filthy enough to be banned from the radio.  And two of the catchiest songs on the record are the other bonus tracks, “Mrs. Officer” and “Let the Beat Build.”  Then there’s some kind of kudos I want to hand the guy for ending the record with a stoner rant, a highly musical stoner rant IMHO, against the criminal justice system and Al Sharpton over Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
 
But “Playing with Fire” haunts me in a unique way, and I think it’s less self explanatory than these other records.  Anyone will give me “Tie My Hands” or “Shoot Me Down,” but “Playing with Fire” is so audacious and vulgar it’s bound to go into the pile marked, “What’s Wrong with Lil’ Wayne, reasons 520-532.”
 
After all, this is the song on which he claims, “I’m doing the same shit Martin Luther King did/Checkin in the same hotel, in the same suite, bitch /Same balcony like, ‘assassinate me, bitch!’”  There’s too much wrong with this to ignore.  For starters, MLK wasn’t looking to get killed, and Wayne sounds not only grandiose but suicidal here.  Also, for all of the alliances Lil’ Wayne has woven in rap music and for all of his representing New Orleans, he can hardly be said to represent a tangible social movement. 
 
On the other hand, this is a song about being crazy, for better and for worse.  After R&B legend Betty Wright introduces the song, with this melodramatic flourish reminiscent of a James Bond theme, the very first line Lil Wayne utters is “Mama always told me I was crazy.”  He then goes on to talk about how the women in his life (yes, “hoes” and “bitches”) tell him he’s hot but complain he doesn’t listen to them.  And then he explains, “I feel caged in my mind/It’s like my flow is doin’ time.” 
 
His voice spits fire recalling this frustration, adding “I go crazy inside” and sounding like he’s working himself into a panic before he expresses how it feels when he raps, when the madness “come out it’s fine.”  And his voice calms for that last word, adding, “like wine.”  He’s right about this.  Whatever listeners make think of Lil’ Wayne’s bizarre metaphysical conceits, that voice is an asset to every one of the many hits it graces on the radio at any given time.  Key to that appeal is the way, say on the now popular remix of “Love in This Club,” he sounds so unhinged next to the cool control of Usher and Beyonce.  That rasp is its own instrument as well, wounded and funky like no one else—a very spicy wine, bracing even, but smooth too.
 
And vulgar—yes, that’s key.  Not unlike Richard Pryor, “Pussy” seems to be Lil’ Wayne’s favorite word, certainly his favorite metaphor.  In this song alone, he uses it to mean whatever serves his purpose at the time.  It’s the ultimate excitement; it’s keeping it real; it’s both a word that means fucking and a word that means masturbation, and it’s a choice between the two, which makes it a metaphor for a metaphor, for getting the job done or messing around.  Like “fuck” and perhaps all the best curse words, the word means whatever he wants it to mean depending on context and inflection.  If the word is inherently offensive to you, you probably shouldn’t go here.  After all, after his mad evocation of Martin Luther King, he punctuates every line of Betty Wright’s whisper to a scream refrain with various taunts around the theme of “Hey Pussy, Lay Pussy.”  That’s just bad manners.
 
And yet, that chorus, the third one, with Lil’ Wayne spewing vulgarities alongside the beautiful vocals of a woman old enough to be his mother, is key to this record.  They sound like a team, odd and ungainly maybe but formidable, and the last verse makes it all come together.
 
In that last verse, he tells his own story, turning to address his mother, Cita, directly.  “I love you, Cita,” he says.  He then asks her, “‘Member when your pussy second husband tried to beat ya?”  He recalls grabbing a meat cleaver from the kitchen and facing off against the man.
 
The music–which has been essentially a mix of sustained chords, piano arpeggio and a fiery guitar break after each chorus—now builds in intensity.  The piano part is now matched by a counterpoint John Carpenter may have written, while layers of keys like strings and even theramin swell toward explosion.  He recalls that face off—”He ain’t give a fuck/I didn’t give a fuck neither.”
 
And then the heart of it—
 
“He could see the devil, see the devil in my features
You could smell the ether
You can see Cita, you could see the Cita, see the Cita in my features
And she don’t play neither.”
 
His mother may have always thought he was crazy, but he sees that as her in him.  And he’s not ashamed of it; it makes him proud.  It’s his strength, and, yes, probably some of his weakness.  But that’s nothing new—who can really separate their strengths from their weaknesses?  What I love about Wayne Carter is the way he embraces the contradiction.  Does it mean he can sound like a misogynist sometimes?  Hell yeah!  But that may be a risk worth taking for the sake of the unbridled truth.  Lil’ Wayne brags about having sex with women on this record, and he brags about not needing them, but he also answers them time and time again; he collaborates and conspires with them, and he ultimately sees his strength as tied up in the mother he carries in his bones.
 
One of the fascinating things about this record is the nature of Betty Wright’s vocal, which frames the rhymes and closes things out.  At first, she sounds like she may be taunting other rappers or even Lil’ Wayne himself, saying “your grill is shining as you’re driving down the streets of gold” before launching into the self defensive threat, “you can’t blame me if I set this stage on fire!”  By the end of the song, it’s clear she’s speaking with him.  All the material niceties of the world don’t mask the fact that they both are just about to explode.  Cita’s legacy in her son; Cita and her son as one.  No, there’s no mass social movement built around such folks, but that’s the fire next time.

Lil’ Wayne “Playing with Fire” on Tha Carter III 

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