Graphic via POW
Ladies and gentlemen, pimps and players, this is Anthony Seaman
I’ve never known a world without Lil Wayne. I was born in October of ’97, two weeks before the teenaged Weezy debuted on The Hot Boys’ Get It How U Live! – a record that sold over 300,000 copies and established the Nola quartet as the greatest boy band of all-time. In the 8th grade, I convinced my mom to call a local radio station to win a free copy of Tha Carter IV on its release week. The summer of ’16, my first after high school, was defined by Tunechi’s run of 2 Chainz collabs.
Wayne is the archetypal mainstream rap star, but he became an icon by disdaining the larger bureaucracy of corporate music. He took his time getting to concerts. He made interviewers wait hours for pithy responses. His rollouts were unfocused messes. He shrugged off major label convention by splattering out ideas instantaneously.
During marathon studio sessions, Wayne recorded songs that were subsequently bundled up by DJs and producers. Sometimes he knew about it, sometimes he didn’t. The true thrill of the Lil Wayne experience was living life one couplet at a time. The vital through line for Wayne’s career was and remains process–the literal act of creating something from the neurons firing in the booth. And yet every YouTube ripped instrumental, every re-imagined hook, every blunt blown between takes, every toilet bowl punchline, and every Gillie Da Kid clash were all side quests when compared to his Tha Carter series.
Since 2003, the North Star for each Carter project was to supersede any expectation, peer, superior, or rising challenger. They were never vibe-guided experiments, they were consciously crafted tectonic realignments of Wayne’s place within the greater musical landscape. Tha Carter‘s many entries intentionally pivoted him from Southern wunderkind to a respected craftsman, smoked out rap gladiator to family friendly late night TV guest, and from a mixtape maestro to a musical deity.
It’s currently June 2025 and Wayne is still a global icon pushing his newest album, Tha Carter VI. Revisiting each previous Carter project puts his storied career in a more refined context as the realities of this newest edition still washes over us. Looking back reminds us that Wayne isn’t just a cloudy phonic alchemist, but a hyper-competitive savant calculating the perfect formula to seize the world.
Tha Carter: Man Of The House
During an interview on Talib Kweli’s podcast The People’s Party, Mannie Fresh, the Cash Money Records workhorse producer and absurdist half of the Big Tymers, recounted a conversation he and Wayne had in a Dallas club one sweaty night in 2003 before beginning Tha Carter sessions. Wayne was serious, huffing to his mentor about his goals; “Bro I’m going a whole different direction, none of that kiddie shit. I can really rap. No more of them childish ass beats, bring your A game.”
Weezy’s frustration was understandable. His previous albums Lights Out and 500 Degreez didn’t connect the way his debut, Tha Block Is Hot had. Platinum was the bar and he was hardly scraping together gold. No one cared he was the teen that popularized “bling bling,” a phrase so powerful Merriam-Webster had to adopt it for its pages. The novelty of youth wore off as he added tattoos, grew a quarter inch or so, and dropped a couple of flaccid singles. Stylistically he’d stagnated, and he knew it, but his confidence never wavered. At this time, Wayne became the last man standing on Cash Money: Juvenile left for Atlantic Records, B.G. ditched the bright lights for indie hub Koch, and Turk found a new home at eOne, with each citing money troubles and interpersonal tension with Birdman as their reason for breaking ties. Wayne, the baby of the crew, with his rap brothers gone, had to become the man of the house.
The months following that club rant were a tennis match between Mannie and Wayne. A song would be “finished” together overnight; the next morning, Mannie would pump up the production and Wayne re-wrote his verses to match Fresh’s new flares. Internally, Wayne had planned for this project to be his last hurrah with the man who until that point produced nearly every song he’d ever rapped over. Perfection was the only way the duo could ride out.
In June 2004, Tha Carter established Wayne’s rebirth. He’d mastered the charismatic corner boy persona that Southern rap revolved around for the next decade. The album had hits (“Go DJ”, “Bring It Back”), heart (“Miss My Dawgs”), a steadfast dedication to the street code (“Snitch,” “The Heat”), mystifying drug dealer tutorials (“Who Wanna”) and even a lil something for the ladies (“Earthquake”). Flows matured from beeline sprints to a mercurial trick box where changes in speed, tone, and tenor came every few bars. It was as much a collection of block party knockers as it was a slick talk clinic. With the “On The Block” skits and the “Walk In” / “Inside” / “Walk Out” suite he flashed a conceptual mind, using these interludes to build his home as a tower of crime and survival akin to the New Jack City project building of the same name.
Within a year the tape sold over 800,000 copies. It’s now certified 2x platinum with “Go DJ” standing as his biggest hit until “Lollipop” rerouted the sands of time (more on that later). It also lapped the critical acclaim and success of nearly every previous Cash Money recording. He was no longer the young buck making the most of his sanctioned 16 bars, he was a bonafide soloist capable of carrying the torch. The next question over his head became, “What did you mean by that best rapper alive” line?
Tha Carter II: A Coup & A Coronation
In December of ‘03, Jay-Z announced his retirement from rap music. It was a lie, but for a little while Hov played off his Michael Jordan cosplay as reality. On the lead single for Tha Carter I, “Bring It Back,” Wayne refers to this marketing ploy, calling himself “the best rapper alive since the best rapper retired”. While C1 may have been a sea change for Wayne’s career, he still wasn’t viewed to be in that top class of MCs.
Right before Jay hung his Yankee fitted in the rafters, 50 Cent had broken the pop culture space-time continuum with Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. Rap’s capital city was in flux thanks to the power vacuum Jay left behind. Simultaneously, Kanye became the chart-topping new face of rapper-producers, T.I. held down the King Of The South title, Nelly went triple platinum in 3 months despite dropping the second worst double disc in rap history (here’s lookin’ at you Lil Flip), and Eminem was filling stadiums while trying reallllyyyyy hard to be worse than Nelly.
Wayne needed more to break through the chaos. The rap world was for the taking and another boldly Southern record wasn’t enough to do it. Wayne wasn’t interested in being the King Of The South, he was going for King Of The World, and that meant shaking off his regional signifiers to do something universally understood: blacking out on every beat he could find.
With relatively unknown beat makers T-Mix and Batman replacing Mannie Fresh as his lead producer, Wayne was unbound. Carter 2 was a jukebox: soul samples, reggae adjacent anthems, grinding guitars, skitzo synth kaleidoscopes. For 77 minutes he emptied the clip. There’s a barely a hook in sight on “Tha Mobb,” “Fly In,” “Fireman,” and “Money On My Mind.” He introduced us to the hotboxing king of cool in Curren$y, imitated gun sounds with Kurupt, and there’s always the obligatory Birdman song. There was nothing he couldn’t do.
Energy wise it was a downshift from unchained hunger to swagger, from coded entendres to plainspoken similes and conversational streams of thought. To be the best, he had to act like the best. Blunts were lit with $100 bills, designer jackets were treated like disposable throwaways, and the faces of fans and women all blurred together. Leaning in the backseat of his Rolls Royce the world was flying by, and he wanted to capture this whirlwind.
One of the chest-pounding statements was “Best Rapper Alive”. The holy choirs and grinding guitars mimic a man preparing for war, asking God for protection as the blacksmiths sharpen their weapon. Once settled he’s eating rappers alive while gambling a nest egg on a single football game, swiftly covering his face just to shoot off yours, embodying the Boogieman while playing Jazz Fest, shimmying into the ether before returning for a victory lap on your grave. It was a coup and coronation all in one.
Tha Carter 2 doubled the sales of its predecessor and was showered in critical acclaim – many still claim it as his opus. Off a calculated rebrand and over-powering penmanship Weezy made it into that elevated penthouse suite where only the most adored and popular rap stars could kick their feet up. But it still wasn’t enough for him.
Tha Carter III: Breaking Rap & Becoming Pop
The floodgates are open. There are calls from Outkast, Destiny’s Child, Lloyd, Enrique Iglesias, Playaz Circle, Vibe Magazine, and MTV. Lil Wayne had become a golden ticket for your lead single to get radio play, for your magazine to fly off the shelves, for viewers to tap into your video countdown shows. Every few months, a new track hit the blogosphere featuring Weezy F. Baby jacking your favorite rappers’ beat as his own and running wild. The problem was, many of these tracks were never supposed to see the light of day.
From his first Sqad Up tape in ‘02 until the release of C2 14 mixtapes were officially released. Wayne had built a fanbase that was okay with using their hard earned cash for a CD every few years as long as their iPods were getting filled for free in between. This digitally fluent audience made the impending leaks that much more detrimental. It wasn’t just a few bootleggers getting their paws on demos to be hawked at flea markets. Online compilations of to-be lead singles and A-side heaters flooded the internet, getting gobbled up in the hundreds of thousands; “Showtime,” “I Feel Like Dying,” “Scarface,” tracks with Kanye, Swizz Beatz, and Dr. Dre. Even Wayne’s most ambitious mutations had a wide-ranging audience. A famed studio rat, Weezy cloistered away with endless beat files from a who’s who of hitmakers to replenish his stash of songs.
“A Milli” was a supercharged “Money On My Mind,” “Let The Beat Build” accumulated the essence of all the soul looping leaks into a giggle-filled 4th wall break, “Dr. Carter” mastered backpacker jazz rap so perfectly Aceyalone could be found roaming Leimert Park kicking himself for months, “Mr. Carter” is the long-brewing boss battle with Jay-Z fitted with a beat so grandiose Obama could have ripped it for his Inauguration walkout music, “Tie My Hands” was an oddly sensual rehash of “Georgia Bush,” and “Mrs. Officer” is flirting so forward anyone less hypnotic would catch six months in County.
When the Tha Carter III was released in June of ’08, despite a full leak a week and a half earlier, the record went on to sell 1 million copies in its first week. It was one of only 12 albums to reach the milestone that decade and today is certified 8x platinum. Even with all the elevated fan service and critical adulation, there was disappointment that none of the leaks made the record, leaving a “what could have been” taste in the mouth of super fans despite Wayne cresting into global stardom. A more defensible gripe came at the realization that ten flawless tracks existed on the lengthy LP. Whittling the tracklist down to those 10 it could have made it the 21st century Illmatic meets Thriller meets Pet Sounds, but perfection wasn’t the point.
If he was chasing the status-quo “Lollipop,” a dismembered minimalist 5-minute sexcapade that became the Bing Bang moment for any rapper who ever used auto-tune after, would never have existed. Sure, we’d be better off in a world where “Phone Home” (or “You Ain’t Got Nuthin” or “Pussy Monster” or “Shoot Me Down”) never saw the light of day, but Wayne calling himself a martian alone created a Franz Ferdinand-level butterfly effect that made it worth sitting through a dozen misplaced sound effects and bad hair jokes. Every inflection, bar, auto-tune preset, and beat on the LP would be repurposed over the next 20 years, inspiring thousands of songs to be made in his likeness.
Wayne laughed in the face of leakers as much as he did the previous 35 years of recorded rap. What was questionable today would be seen as influential tomorrow, because freedom and confidence always lined his creations’ core. By shredding the fabric of rap, he had solidified himself as a pop culture icon.
Tha Carter IV: Return Of The King
Even by Wayne standards, the three years between Tha Carter III and Carter IV were messy as hell. On the one hand, he was still an international superstar, a GRAMMY winner, and a Billboard chart staple. Yet his half-decade of dominance was running stale. He released a panned “rock” album, became the punchline of early memes, made skateboarding 75% of his personality, recorded an astonishing amount of cunnilingus and constipation bars that never failed to make your ears bleed, and was sent to Rikers Island for eight months after police discovered a gun on his tour bus in New York City.
Before and after his prison stint Wayne was taking his sweet time to craft Tha Carter IV. Fewer stores were carrying physicals and the growing audience of young people online were fickle, ready to pick and choose songs before buying full albums. Creating oddities for lead singles was becoming tougher as more and more crossover hits had sanitized pop star hooks and formless EDM-inspired production. I Am Not A Human Being and Sorry 4 Tha Wait had already been scoffed off as filler projects.
Simultaneously, Wayne had slowly reprised Young Money Records into a conglomerate of G-Leaguers (Jae Millz, Shanell, Lil Chuckie, T-Streets, Short Dawg), homies turned tax right-offs (Gudda Gudda, Mack Maine), guys who peaked as XXL Freshman (Lil Twist, Kidd Kidd), a hot shot hitmaker turned Hollywood heartthrob in that skanky Billy Bob Thorton kinda way (Tyga), and two history-altering enigmas (Drake, Nicki Minaj). With would-b new rap stars flooding the internet every week, Wayne found there was no room for error. Nicki and Drake were among those internet darlings becoming stars-in-waiting thanks to Wayne’s seal of approval. One more misstep, and his predecessors would take his spot for good.
Tha Carter IV, released in August of 2011, ended up being a hit. He outsold Watch The Throne, the opulent collision of Hov and Ye, by 600,000 copies in its first week. With a subtle touch, he showed sonically and stylistically that he was tapped in with the rising generation while bodying those deemed his equals.
His verses were presented as poetic hashtag raps about life and lust, even if the punchlines only made his angsty teen skate partners laugh. He turned Rick Ross and Jadakiss into footnotes on their features. Andre 3000 and Busta Rhymes kissed the ring. The intensity of “6 Foot 7 Foot” made “A Milli” look like a lay up line. “President Carter” and “Nightmares Of The Bottom” used plucks of harp strings and bouncy piano keys the way a blog darling producer would flip a Joanna Newsom sample.
Wayne was no longer an active shaper of culture, but a spry legacy act. Take Care was setting up to wipe all slates clean and the Pink Friday: Super Mega Roman Grandmaster Deluxe (Target Exclusive Edition) singles were swallowing what little oxygen was left. He gracefully was moving to a different phase of his career, gaining younger fans, killing features and using his years of label cache to keep his singles in drive time rotation. In many ways it was his death rattle record, one last claw for life as he heel flipped into the sunset.
Tha Carter V: A Stifled Confessional
Rappers never retire, but Wayne’s career was defined by so many firsts that it seemed slightly more possible when he announced that Tha Carter V would be his send-off. He wanted to tap out at 35, be a dad, skate on pyramids, and do whatever the hell Martians freed from the expectations of pop perfection do. Had everything gone as planned with the albums initial release date in 2014, that may have all come to fruition. Instead, we got the most aggressive battle between a label and its star artist since Prince wrote “slave” on his face.
Main events in Wayne’s multi-year rumble with Cash Money include (but are not limited to): Wayne’s tour bus getting shot up in a semi-connected beef with Young Thug, Tidal getting sued for $50 million over the exclusive release of the Free Weezy Album, a physical altercation with Birdman in Miami, a handful of leaks, a million “coming soon” updates, Wayne accusing UMG of conspiring with Birdman (like father like son fr), and Rick Ross trying to play mediator on “Idols Become Rivals.”
Once the album finally arrived in August of 2018, it brought an exhausted sigh of relief more than a moment of celebration. What little hype was left was quickly burnt away after trudging through the bloated, rudderless tracklist. The most generous read was that it was meant to be his own 4:44; an emotionally vulnerable therapy record but with his patented alien twist applied. “Mess”, “Don’t Cry”, “Can’t Be Broken” and “Let It All Work Out” were bloodletting memory dumps. “Dark Side Of The Moon” and “What About Me” are sing-songy musings on love. Sadly these flashes of focus were washed away by the staggering 23-song tracklist (cut down from the originally promised 31). No meta-narrative was explored, no cultural shift was forced, and only a lone hit (an unlistenable “Special Delivery” redux) could be extracted. It still feels like a sin for Tha Carter title to be slapped onto it.
Tha Carter VI: Posthumous
Do the albums Funeral, Trust Fund Babies, Welcome 2 Collegrove or Tha Fix Before Tha VI mean anything to you? For the 99.9% of the population who said “no,” congrats! You still live in a world where seeing Lil Wayne’s name listed as a feature can spark a nostalgic warmth or even enjoyment. For the 0.1% of us who did allow their curiosity to torture them into listening to these albums, it was clear that Wayne was so washed bubbles would fly out of his nose if he sneezed. He had just spent 2024 on a multi-part “woe is me” tour after losing the bid to perform at the Super Bowl LIX halftime show to Kendrick Lamar, and he hadn’t had a song make it back up the charts since appearing on Nicki Minaj’s “RNB” in 2023.
With only 24 hours to go before the album’s July 6 release, “The Days” featuring Bono (yes, lead singer of the most popular band that nobody would ever say is their favorite band) was premiered in a commercial for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. The snippet showed a song that was crafted in a lab to play as bumper music for a low budget CW drama, ready at any moment to be played in a lightly stocked CVS.
A few hours later, an AI promo video copying Jay-Z’s famed Rhapsody commercial began floating around. Right before the first game of the aforementioned Finals, a tracklist surfaced online. We saw features from Andrea Bocelli, Wyclef, Machine Gun Kelly, Jelly Roll, and a few other rappers that should have retired pre-pandemic. Not only were we 0/3 on promo material but Machine Gun Kelly would be involved? What optimism I had left was fully drained from my body.
Tha Carter VI was stacked to the gills with 68 minutes of indescribable garbage. There’s a cover of Weezer’s “Island In The Sun,” Lin-Manuel Miranda has production credits on a song called “Peanuts 2 N Elephant,” and Mod Sun produced the soulless Kodak Black and Machine Gun Kelly collab, “Alone In The Studio With My Gun.” Then comes all-time groaner lines like “eyes tight like my name Won Ding Ding Dong” or “play pickleball with my dick today.”
Sure, for 25-plus years these ear bleeding lines have floated in Wayne’s catalog, but vintage Wayne sold them with such pizazz you’d talk yourself into believing they were good. Now, his voice appears to be hanging on for dear life, fully ravaged by years of smoking and overuse. Tha Carter VI had moment after moment of Wayne an inch away from coughing on the mic. Words slipped away mid-verse, falling out of rhythm no matter his best efforts.
I’m thankful Wayne is still kicking, but the world-beating artist has been long dead. With Tha Carter VI, his past lives have been forcibly reanimated into a creature beyond recognition. Playing background singer on his own songs (“Sharks”) and using his own demos for album cuts (“Mula Komin In”) are the kinds of tricks labels pull for a posthumous release. Tha Carter VI has no core goal and no musical throughline. With so little to prove or fight against, Wayne still left the world disappointed.
I am convinced every rap fan’s life has been molded by Wayne and his Carter series. His stardom, style, quotables, lighter flick, blizzard of hits, and iconoclastic croak have permeated more lives than any 21st-century pop girly. He’s New Orleans’ prodigal son, hip-hop’s Stevie Wonder, the living embodiment of rap’s transformation from the voice of the projects to intergalactic sound gardens. Not to mention the father to a multi-generation clan of musical offspring. Whatever slop and let-downs the next 20 years of his career holds are irrelevant, because these last 20-plus have been spent imprinting himself onto the DNA of American music like few before, one Carter at a time.
