The most interesting thing about this interview from 2004, before Lil Wayne's rise to prominence, is the interviewer's implicitly trying to get Lil Wayne and Mannie Fresh to admit to some difference between "black music" and "white music." Of course they're unfamiliar, because all of the artists the interviewer mentions reached the height of their popularity in the late 70s/early 80s. What's also interesting to note is that though Fresh is familiar with Hall & Oates, and Lil Wayne isn't, Fresh is a full eight years older than Lil Wayne, and probably has a better memory of when Hall & Oates was on the charts. The whole clip is just a good reminder that differences in musical taste have a racial element, but they have a much stronger generational one. Can constructs as archaic as "black music" and "white music" really exist in a world where white kids from the suburbs are willing to pay tons of cash to watch Lil Wayne play a guitar solo?

[MTV Vault]