If you somehow find yourself at the gates of Lil Wayne’s fortified Miami Beach palace, a security guard will interrogate you as soon as your car door slams shut. He’ll require that you state your business, and even if said business checks out, you’ll be zealously scrutinized as though you’re trespassing on an arsenal of nuclear warheads. The 15,000-square-foot, $11 million, hyper-modern waterfront compound nests on a banana-palm-ringed island. Wayne’s publicist prefers that the exact location be kept secret, and for good reason. Over the past decade and a half, the 32-year-old from the impoverished Hollygrove section of New Orleans has been worshipped at levels usually reserved for European soccer gods, martyred icons, and Marvel superheroes.
During an age when celebrities flash their day-to-day indecencies to reveal that they’re “just like us,” Wayne is the extraterrestrial inverse. It’s almost more difficult to envision him as a corporeal breathing and belching mortal than as a rap game Roald Dahl character. His self-descriptions burnish the image. He’s a beast, a dog, a Martian, a vampire, a goblin.
Two separate volumes in his catalogue are entitled I Am Not a Human Being.
But you can confirm that Lil Wayne (né Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.) is legitimately flesh and blood if you successfully negotiate security. Closer to the compound, one can spot a butler offering hors d’oeuvres just beyond the Tetris-like facade of tilted glass rectangles. If you furnish his minions with the magic password, a metallic drawbridge gate will rise. This is your cue to enter.
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