

The first sound we hear on ColleGrove is an old recording of Wayne telling 2 Chainz to leave Ludacris behind and sign to Young Money.

And 2 Chainz doesn’t mind admitting this. (Wayne, for his part, was barely old enough to drive when he started making hits.) 2 Chainz might’ve come up under Ludacris, but he found stardom around the time Wayne took him under his wing. He was well into his thirties by the time he started making hits on his own, and that simply never happens in rap.

That’s pretty incredible, considering how much time 2 Chainz spent on the DTP bench. He isn’t kidding.Ģ Chainz isn’t some supernova rap star, but he’s carved out a career as a solid, dependable B-lister, a guy who scores hits and knows how to put together a memorable punchline. “If it wasn’t for Wayne, it wouldn’t be a lot of dudes in the game, including me,” 2 Chainz raps in the opening moments of ColleGrove, his and Wayne’s new collaborative album. One half of Playaz Circle was Tity Boi, a guy who’d been on guest-verse duty in Ludacris’ Disturbing Tha Peace crew for years and who, other than his goofy-ass name and a brief, ill-advised feud with Trap Muzik-era T.I., had never really made much of an impression. The song belonged to Playaz Circle, a little-known Atlanta group that had never scored a hit before and never would again. Wayne didn’t even rap on the song he just sang the hook in the beginning of that era when he would sing all the fucking time. “Duffle Bag Boy” wasn’t Jay’s song, and it wasn’t Wayne’s either. The crowd reacted like this was a Fugazi show and they were hearing “Waiting Room.” In my many years of going to shows, I have heard very, very few singalongs that loud. Instead, he sang his chorus to “Duffle Bag Boy,” a song that was huge at the moment. And when the song was over, Wayne grabbed the mic for a quick second. About halfway through the show, Lil Wayne came out, grinning like a gremlin and loping in this little hop-step, to do “Hello Brooklyn” with Jay. But the most memorable moment of the show didn’t belong to Jay. This was a great show, as most Jay-Z shows are. One night late in 2007, I went to see Jay-Z at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, a small-venue show that was part of the American Gangster release rollout.
