Lil Wayne makes another Green Bay Packers song with the single Special Ops

Lil Wayne released Special Ops on August 28, and it continues one of the odder long-running projects in his catalog: songs written for the Green Bay Packers. He has been doing this for years, going back to the Green And Yellow records, and the new one arrived first as part of a promotional advert for the team's new Rivalries uniform.

Manny G, Swede and Ethan First produced it, and the beat is built loud. Guitars, crowd chants and trap drums collide underneath a verse that mostly exists to insult other teams. The Chicago Bears take the heaviest fire, along with their coach Ben Johnson, and rival colours get worked in as insults, with one line refusing Honolulu blue and purple.

The writing is functional rather than ambitious, which is what a fight song is for. Weezy flows comfortably enough across it, and the reference points are all local to an NFL divisional rivalry rather than to anything in his own catalog.

The reception was cool. HotNewHipHop gave it 2 out of 5 across six user reviews, the lowest score of any of the singles the site covered from that week, which is a reasonable verdict on a track built to be played in a stadium rather than listened to at home.

There is no album attached to it. Special Ops is listed as a standalone release, the same as the earlier Packers songs, and it works as a piece of team marketing that happens to have a rapper of his stature attached.

That relationship is old and genuine. Lil Wayne is a lifelong Packers fan and has folded the team into his music repeatedly, which is why the franchise keeps coming back to him rather than to somebody local. The rest of the week's hip-hop releases are listed on the release calendar, and MusicSuey has also been following the Young Thug lawsuit over the Lil Wayne tour bus shooting.