Pitchfork

"Lil Wayne is a commercially successful rapper and major sports fan." This we know. It's the source of the quote that's surprising: It's Lil Wayne's byline over at ESPN The Mag Daily, the ESPN The Magazine blog that just ran Wayne's first in a series of sports-related blog posts for the Worldwide Leader [via Nah Right].

An editor's note explains how the literary partnership came about: "When speaking to [Wayne] for a package about at-bat music in MLB (a bunch of guys use Lil Wayne), he offered to blog for us. Awesome."

That interview is actually online, and it's pretty great for almost too many reasons to name. He improvises a couplet for Prince Fielder, comments on Pedro Martínez's swagger, picks his at-bat music (the guitar solo from "Purple Rain"), waffles between the Rays and Cubs for his pick to win the World Series, and reveals his fantasy football team's name: The South Beach Sloths.

Wayne introduces his first blog post by saying, "I don't watch nothing but sports-- no movies, no news, no television shows-- so I thought this would be fun." And it is. He talks about the NFL (he's a Packers fan), tennis (he loves Roger Federer, but Rafael Nadal is his favorite), and fantasy football again (he's 2-1 and fifth place in his league). He also shares a story from his childhood as a fullback.

The real surprise about Wayne's blog is that he writes with surprising clarity. Maybe that's just the work of a good editor, but for a dude who often sounds too high to string two coherent thoughts together, Wayne comes off as a guy who knows his shit and can explain it without resorting to animal/space/sex metaphors.

Check back at ESPN The Mag Daily for future posts from Lil Wayne.

Of course, the rapper will return to music and animal/space/sex metaphors on October 25 when he appears at New Orleans' Voodoo Music Experience: The Tenth Ritual.

UPDATE: The interview (not the blog) Wayne did is part of an ESPN The Magazine feature about at-bat music called "Diamond Trax". If you head to this link, you can browse all the entrance songs the Mag folks found and preview them in iTunes. There's also an interview with Young Jeezy. Pretty rad, but I doubt anyone uses the breakdown from Battles' "Tonto", like I plan to when I become the next All-Star shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds. Hey, I can dream.