VIDEO: Lil Wayne Nods To Tupac, Cobain In VMA's Promo

New Orleans rapper Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., best known as Lil Wayne or Weezy, kicks a door down with his foot in a new promo video for MTV's Video Music Awards, set to air on August 28. Perhaps the door stands for 30 years of MTV history being flattened under the weight of Wayne's bad boy swagger. Images of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur and Run DMC float by in the 30-second video, and when Wayne crowd-surfs through a house party, the soundtrack quickly changes from Wayne's rapping to Nirvana's punk rock classic, "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Wayne is also seen smashing a guitar to bits – a stunt made famous by Nirvana's troubled frontman Kurt Cobain. By the time Wayne flashes his signature "grill" in a satisfied grin at the end of the video, he seems to have made music history an antique land and himself the king of its kings.

The promo video opens with Wayne spraying a wall with graffiti, itself a symbol of the changing cultural landscape of the past three decades that has seen gangster insignia transform from social protest into establishment-authorized art form. The same could be said for hip hop and its millionaire rappers, Lil Wayne among them. MTV must be planning quite a show, with Adele and Chris Brown also slated to perform.

Watch the promo here: