Matthew Wrather hosts a panel including Mark Lee, Peter Fenzel, and Ryan Sheely (with special guest John Levin) to overthink the moderate suck-fest that is the Grammys and our recent visit to New York Comic-Con.

Comments? Rants? Raves? Email podcast at overthinkingit dot com or call 20-EAT-LOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401).

Download Episode 32 (MP3)

Comparing Lil Wayne to Jay-Z has become the favorite sport of music writers covering Wayne’s new album, Tha Carter III, starting with its leak on May 31 and continuing through the album’s release earlier this week. Some of these comparisons are overwhelmingly positive, anointing Weezy as Hova’s presumptive successor at the top of the rap game. Others, notably hip-hop bloggers, have lead the backlash against the New Orleans rapper, arguing that the Carter III, along with the rest of Wayne’s output, falls short of even some of Jay-Z’s middling efforts, and can’t come close to touching Jay’s best albums such as Reasonable Doubt, the Blueprint, and The Black Album.

These comparisons are far from spontaneous or accidental. As far back as 2004’s Tha Carter, Wayne started making it quite clear that he considers himself to be the “Greatest Rapper Alive”, sometimes implicitly inviting the comparison to Jay, and more recently asserting his apparent superiority by dissing Jay-Z in interviews and redoing several of Jay-Z’s songs on his own mixtapes. Moreover, the two have collaborated twice in the past year, with Wayne featured on “Hello Brooklyn” from Jay-Z’s American Gangster album and Jay dropping a verse on CIII’s second track, appropriately titled “Mr. Carter” (if you don’t understand why, go ahead and click on the first two links above, and come back for the analysis after the jump).