Ahead of a huge year for both DJ Drama and Lil Wayne, the former delivered some exciting news for loyal fans of the latter.
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In a recent interview with Elliott Wilson and Brian “B.Dot” Miller of the Rap Radar podcast, DJ Drama announced that Lil Wayne’s 2006 mixtape Dedication 2 will drop on all digital streaming platforms this year. When discussing hosting more mixtape-like projects with other artists in the future, he explained that he wants them all to be eligible to land on DSPs, and brought up the news about Dedication 2 in the same breath.
“I just feel like today in 2023, if we’re gonna do it, let’s do it, you know what I’m sayin’?” he said. “And it might take a little bit of time but it can be done. Speaking of that, we are dropping Dedication 2 on streaming platforms this year and it’s gonna have some new music along with it. That’s pretty exciting.” Check out the clip below around the 56-minute mark.
While a re-release date has yet to be revealed, this development follows a trend Wayne set in motion in 2020. July 2020 saw the Louisiana legend re-release his 2015 Free Weezy Album on DSPs, which, at first, only came out exclusively on Tidal. Then August 2020 saw Wayne re-release his beloved 2009 mixtape No Ceilings. This, like many other of his non-DSP projects, came out on websites like DatPiff and SpinRilla.
Two years later, Wayne continued this quest to make his prior music more accessible. In January 2022 he put his 2011 classic tape Sorry 4 the Wait on DSPs. With each of these aforementioned re-releases, tweaks needed to be made to the track list. Some new songs were added to show listeners music Wayne had been working on, while some cuts from the original track lists could not be included due to sampling clearance issues.
Either way, though, this theme over the past few years from Wayne truly shows how much he appreciates his fans. DJ Drama, who hosted many of Wayne’s early mixtapes with narration, has also seen a resurgence in his career. Hosting recent high-profile projects like Tyler, The Creator’s 2021 LP Call Me If You Get Lost and J. Cole and Dreamville’s 2022 D-DAY mixtape, Drama has firmly planted himself back on the map.
While fans await Dedication 2‘s re-arrival at some point in 2023, they can also add respective, impending solo albums from Drama and Wayne to their waitlist too. Aiming for a release this spring, Drama’s I’m Really Like That will likely come before Lil Wayne’s long-awaited Tha Carter 6 album, yet to be given a release date.
(Photo by Erika Goldring/Getty Images)
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