Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz spoke to Genius after their "Colegrove" performance and broke down their thoughts on the differences between East Coast and Southern rappers.
Lil Wayne spoke on how Southern rappers spoke more about the struggle and the streets where East Coast rappers would focus on wordplay. “If you’re from the South you almost don’t want to hear word play, you actually just wanna hear what you’re talking about," Weezy went on to say that as a teenager on his come up he didn't have any experiences on the street to rap about - all he had was his wordplay and flow. He accredits Juvenile as a large influence on his style, even going as far as saying he was told not to rap like Turk, who mainly rapped about drugs and project life. Wayne said “Shout out to my big brother Juvy for that, without him they probably wouldn’t be none of that. He was one of the main people that would tell me keep rapping like that”
Wayne didn't downplay the struggle East Coast rappers went through. He spoke on how wordplay and lyricism were more in the forefront. Wayne stated “In the South, our reality is different, then up North, than the East Coast” “Not meaning that they don’t have the hood, just that their reality is rap, their reality is hip hop and music,” “It’s the birthplace of Hip-Hop,”
2 Chainz spoke on how Wayne was a Southern rapper who also cared about lyricism in Hip Hop. 2 Chainz stated "He a southern ni**a, country ni**ga, but he cares about his raps,” "“It’s hard for any ni**a from the south to really care,”
Source: youtube.com
