This is the image used in generating this poem, which looks at Dwayne Carter, Jr.’s past and how it shaped the later persona we know as Lil Wayne. This poems has two epigraphs, which serve to link Lil Wayne’s personal history to a larger body of literary concerns.

Drafts is a long continuous poem that Duplessis began writing in 1985. “Draft 58” is published in the book Torques. Duplessis states: “Torquing is a conceptual strategy of ethical, political, and cultural interrogation.” –from I’ll Drown My Book

Rachel Blau Duplessis is a poet as well as a critic of modern and contemporary poetics. All poetry is “of writing under the writing” as she says in her poem “Draft 6.”

From Foucault’s History of Madness, a book discussing how madness is a social construct. The word “alien” plays on Lil Wayne’s line in No Cielings where he states: “We are not the same, I’m a muthafucking alien.”

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher. He said: “The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning,” a line that parallels the other epigraph for this poem.

Males in some parts of New Orleans have an average life expectancy of 54.

Angola is a country in Southern Africa and also the name of the Louisiana State Penitentiary also known as the Farm

Angola is a country in Southern Africa and also the name of the Louisiana State Penitentiary also known as the Farm

I’m critical of Lil Wayne’s actual love of New Orleans. He likes to say he’s from here in his music, but his actual investment in his city is less than impressive. Cash Money has been known to give out turkeys on Thanksgiving and Lil Wayne recently built a skate park, which has been less than successful.

Lil Wayne’s self inflicted gun shot wound at 12.