14 R&B Singers Lil Wayne Should Collaborate With On 'DEVOL'
Lil Wayne has been showing love to R&B singers for years now. From 3LW, Destiny's Child and Lil' Mo to Avant, Chris Brown and Lloyd, Weezy has tacked his rap verses onto dozens of R&B songs throughout his career (by our unofficial count, he's been featured on more than 30 R&B singles since 2000). So it's time for a few R&B singers out there to repay the favor.
Late last week, Wayne announced that he's still planning on releasing DEVOL—a collection of love songs he wrote while he was locked up in 2010—sometime in the near future. But before he does, we hope he'll consult a few of the singers he's worked with in the past to make sure his songs have that loving feeling. Check out this list of 14 R&B singers who Wayne should turn to while working on DEVOL.
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The R&B Singer: Drake
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: Drizzy has mastered the art of incorporating both singing and rapping into songs. He doesn't have the greatest singing voice in the world. But he gets by and does just enough to hold the attention of true rhythm and blues fans. So he could definitely give Weezy a few pointers in the studio. Plus, Weezy is technically his boss. So Drizzy would be forced to break out his biggest and best ideas for Wayne.
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The R&B Singer: Chris Brown
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: Weezy and Breezy have never jumped on a song together and not been successful. From "Gimme That" to "Transform Ya" to "Look At Me Now," these two have performed on hit after hit after hit. So we're sure they could do it again on DEVOL. To flip the script, why not have Wayne sing and Brown rap? It's a little gimmicky. But for a single, it could work.
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The R&B Singer: Trey Songz
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: Curiously, Trey Songz and Wayne haven't done much work together in the past. Time to change that. By recording a bunch of love songs, we're guessing Wayne wants the ladies to love him. So pairing up with LL Cool Trey seems like the perfect solution.
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The R&B Singer: Lloyd
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: You could argue that Wayne's best R&B collaborations have come with Lloyd by his side. Specifically, their 2006 hit, "You," is one of the best "love" songs that Wayne has ever appeared on. So if Wayne is going to try his hand at crafting a bunch of other love songs, working with Lloyd would probably be a good place to start.
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The R&B Singer: Kelly Rowland
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Her: At first, we thought about putting Beyonce into this slot. Wayne has worked with her in the past, and she's obviously one of the biggest R&B singers in the world, so she would be an obvious choice. But we can't overlook what Weezy and Ms. Rowland have done together in the past. On both "Motivation" and "Ice," Weezy pushed Rowland to step outside of her good girl image and they created strong singles. We'd like to see them recreate that magic by doing a duet. As silly as that sounds, we think it would work pretty well. At the very least, it would be entertaining, right?
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The R&B Singer: Usher
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: Not every song on DEVOL is going to be a slow, lovey-dovey ballad. At least, we hope not every song on DEVOL is going to be like that. An R&B singer like Usher could help Wayne inject some life and energy into his R&B album. These two haven't worked together too often in the past. But since they both know how to make chart-topping records, we're sure their collaboration would be a success.
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The R&B Singer: Bobby V
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: We assume that Wayne is going to have some sort of budget for DEVOL. So while it would be amazing to get 14 A-list R&B singers on the album, that's probably not going to be possible. In addition to some names like Usher and Drake, he would also have to work in a couple of B-grade artists. No worries, though. In the past, Wayne has made magic with artists like Bobby V. He appeared on Wayne's 2008 single, "Mrs. Officer," and Wayne appeared on his 2012 single, "Mirror." So Wayne should call on someone like Bobby V for help to help fill in the gaps on the album.
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The R&B Singer: Akon
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: Not every song on DEVOL is going to be about falling in love, getting married, and living happily ever after. In fact, we're sure that most songs on DEVOL aren't going to be about those things (Wayne wrote DEVOL in prison, remember?). Some of the tracks are probably going to be about falling in love with the chick who frequents King of Diamonds in Miami on Sunday nights. For those types of tracks, Wayne should call on someone like Akon who has experience in that particular. His single, "I Wanna Love You," is a good example of something that he could help Wayne create.
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The R&B Singer: Jay Sean
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: Jay Sean is a man of many talents. He sings, he raps, he produces, and he writes. So he could help Wayne with all of the elements of putting together a love song. Even better, he's down with Cash Money so he would be cheap labor and would be available to lend Wayne a hand for little to nothing.
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The R&B Singer: Keri Hilson
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Her: Between their work together on Keri's 2008 single, "Turnin' Me On," and their work together on the I Am Music and I Am Still Music tours in 2009 and 2011, these two are familiar with one another. Wayne could also use more female voices both on his album and in the studio with him when he's creating his album to make sure that it's appealing to all of the females out there. The working relationship that these two already have would make it an ideal situation.
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The R&B Singer: Mike Posner
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: On Posner's 2011 remix for his song, "Bow Chicka Bow Wow," Wayne actually sung his verse (without Autotune!) to some degree of success. It wasn't a smash hit by any stretch of the imagination. But it gave us a pretty good idea of what Wayne is going to sound like on DEVOL. So if we were Wayne, we would get back into the studio with Posner and ask him to help us write a song that sounded similar to that one. It might prove to be a winning formula that he could use moving forward.
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The R&B Singer: Keyshia Cole
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Her: Sometimes, pain is love. And throughout her career, Keyshia Cole has done a nice a great job of capturing that sentiment with her heart-wrenching songs. We imagine that Wayne will have a few of those tracks on his album, too, so why not go to Keyshia for some guidance?
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The R&B Singer: Robin Thicke
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: On the low, "Shooter" from Tha Carter II is one of the most underrated tracks of Wayne's career. He came out of nowhere with that track thanks to a solid contribution from Paula Patton's hubby. They've created a couple of other strong tracks together as well as both "Tie My Hands" and "Pretty Lil' Heart" have been received well. So we would be confident in whatever other "love" songs these two came up with for DEVOL.
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The R&B Singer: T-Pain
Why Lil Wayne Should Work With Him: We hate to burst anyone's bubble. But something tells us that the "T-Wayne" album we were promised a few years back isn't coming out anytime soon. Wayne is apparently too busy recording love songs. But that shouldn't stop these two from doing something for DEVOL. Neither of them is technically a "singer" so that would make their love song really, er, interesting. What do you say, guys?
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