Following Kansas City Chiefs’ victory in the 54th Super Bowl on Sunday evening (Feb. 2), Fox premiered their new season of the singing contest show, “The Masked Singer.” A new round of the Nick Cannon-hosted series introduced six masked performers—one of whom turned out to be none other than Lil Wayne.
Weezy covered Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” while masquerading as The Robot. Although Wayne’s vocals were almost unmistakable, the judges were still stumped about his identity. Unfortunately, he was eliminated and unmasked after the first round. However, he called the experience an “unexpected joy.”
“It was unlike any experience I’ve ever had, musically and performance-wise. Choreography—I’ve never done choreography in my life!” he said, adding that he opted for The Robot character to amuse his kids.
As The Robot, Wayne gave clues—including a skateboard and video game controller—to give the judges an idea of who he might be. He opened up about the experience of keeping his anonymity during a post-show interview.
“Just not telling anybody what you doin’ and keeping it a secret, that was dope,” he explained. “I was in the studio, like this whole time, and I wanted to practice the song in the studio but I couldn’t tell my engineer, like, ‘Why did you just turn on Lenny Kravitz?’”
Although he was singing and not rapping, Wayne gave the performance his best shot.
“At the rehearsal I heard people sing, like, that’s real singing right there. You had people crying—you not gonna get that from me, sorry,” he joked.
Last week, Wayne dropped off his 13th studio album, Funeral. The record saw collaborations with Big Sean, Lil Baby, Adam Levine, 2 Chainz, Takeoff, The-Dream, Lil Twist, XXXTENTACION and O.T. Genasis, and includes a Kobe Bryant tribute song called “Bing James.”
See his performance on “The Masked Singer” and post-show interview below.