The Commercial Rise and Artistic Fall of Dwayne Carter

It’s been two weeks since the official release of Lil Wayne’s official studio album Tha Carter III, and I’ve spent the last fortnight listening to the record, re-listening to the previous installments in Tha Carter series and wealth of Weezy mixtapes, and asking myself why Wayne is no longer the best rapper alive. I was a believer after listening to Tha Carter II—a devotee even. At that point (the album was released in 2005, but I never even heard it until the beginning of 2007) Wayne had yet to achieve the obscene level of stardom that he currently holds. In fact, I considered him extremely underrated. When I traced my steps backward and picked up the original Tha Carter, I was baffled as to how more people could not be talking about this kid from New Orleans. His dexterous yet playful verses left my mouth agape and my head shaking in a way that one generally only expects from rap saints like Pac and Biggie and living deities like Jay-Z.

Then the articles gradually started trickling in. XXL wrote a feature story. Wayne’s tattooed and grinning visage framed in trademark dreadlocks began appearing on a variety of magazine covers. His fame was growing by leaps and bounds, only aided by the immensely popular (and entirely free) Da Drought 3 mixtape, which became the hottest hip-hop topic of the summer. Weezy was finally getting the attention he deserved, I believed. Now all that was left was for him to release Tha Carter III at the end of the year and set the record straight once and for all. It would make-up for the previous, largely overlooked Carter installments and would make Wayne’s claims as Best Rapper Alive undeniable. Da Drought 3 was an excellent appetizer—the mixtape format allowing Wayne to be more playful, rapping over others’ beats and cracking jokes without really saying too much. There was entrancing wordplay that demonstrated a love for language, and a willingness to play with his voice that made his flows positively melodic, but little real substance when it came to coherent narratives—always a sticking point for Wayne, but one that he seemed to be improving on in his studio work. I awaited Tha Carter III in hopes of new tracks akin to “Tha Mobb” and “Fly In” from the Carter II—tracks with unparalleled flows that, coupled with Wayne’s newfound public following, would vault him into a higher pantheon of emcees.

Then the levees at the Young Money Studios broke. More than just a leak, the entirety of the Carter III flooded out into the streets months before its scheduled release date. Bootlegged copies of the album compiled by The Empire in a mixtape named The Drought Is Over 2 found their way onto every Wayne fan’s hard drive before the end of August. Wayne tried to play this off as no big deal, claiming he wouldn’t have used those tracks anyway—a position that we now see to be not entirely true based on his recent explosion at The Empire DJs on a radio program (numerous death threats and slurs were directed their way). I don’t think anyone could have predicted how this leak would throw Wayne’s career off kilter at the time; we were all just happy for the new tracks. Now, however, in the wake of a lackluster and underwhelming Tha Carter III, I wish the lid had been kept on the original project and Wayne was allowed to release The Drought Is Over 2 as his official Tha Carter III. All the greatness was there. There was even thematic coherence, as many of the songs dealt with a melancholic longing after lost love (perhaps signaling an emotional maturation on the part of Wayne, who had dealt primarily in M.O.B.s beforehand). Listen to tracks like “Something You Forgot,” “Scarface,” “I Know The Future,” and “La La La” for proof of this collection’s superb nature. Were Wayne allowed the time to clean things up a little more on the album, as I’m assuming he would have in the months remaining before the album’s original release date, he may have released a flawless product. As is, it’s pretty damn close, which is not something you can say of most things bootlegged. Yet, as a mixtape, it fell short of most major critics’ radar (save an article in Vibe magazine that listed most of the tracks as Weezy’s best of ‘07) and its effect on Wayne’s legacy and prestige was thusly diluted.
And the official Carter III was pushed back. Christmas 2007, initially, then January 2008. February, March, April, May followed with more rumors of release, but still nothing. In the meantime, Wayne used the extra time to further catapult his stardom by lending guest appearances to almost any artist in any genre you can think of.

And there was yet more leaking. Another whole Carter III’s worth of tracks was poached by The Empire and released on mixtapes like The Drought Is Over Part 4. While not quite as thematically focused as The Drought Is Over 2, it felt like another worthy Carter III had passed by in bootleg form. Tracks like “One Night Only,” “Trouble,” “When They Come For Me,” and “Burn This City” show Wayne in his top form. While one can’t be sure of Wayne original intentions for this material, it seems likely that he did not mean for it to wander off in the hands of rogue DJs. While nearly every track on The Drought Is Over Part 4 was impressive and album worthy (the Kanye West produced “Comfortable” with Babyface even made the jump to Tha Carter III), it should also be noted that Wayne’s flow no longer seem as tight; he began to sound lazy on some tracks and his thoughts became more disjointed—perhaps a side-effect of his chronic abuse of prescription cough syrup (and god knows whatever other drugs; you can look up the tour bus arrest reports to read about the illegal pharmacy Wayne had driving through the South).

A friend of mine thought that Wayne had become too obsessed with his own celebrity and it was effecting what he rapped about, which I suppose is the case for almost every musical artist—the best work comes when they’re still poor unknowns. Once you are a celebrity, what else do you have to rap/sing about but your own celebrity? In fact, Wayne seemed bent on crafting himself as something above homo sapiens, something he strove for through increased use of Auto-Tune (the vocal modulation device that T-Pain has built a career out of). Wayne’s voice already being one of the most unique in rap, he seemed to transcend the inherent cheesiness of the robotic vocals and became something positively ethereal. Listen to him croon painfully (in a good way) on the track “Rider” for proof of this. Still, his increased love for his new voice made me worried as he became more of a singer and less of a rapper. This is clearly evinced in the number one song in the country right now—“Lollipop”—a song so lyrically brain-dead that it’s almost painful, yet also strangely addictive. I’ve yet to switch the station when it comes on the radio, despite how amazingly overplayed it and its remix are.

When Tha Carter III release date of June 10th was finally set in stone, many fans were feeling more annoyance at the delays than eager anticipation for the product. After all the setbacks and gradual increase in his lazy rapping, I was relying on Tha Carter III to redeem Lil Wayne. If it wasn’t as good as the leaked material that came before, I would have to conclude that the peak of his artistic career had passed. Now, after listening to Tha Carter III several times, I would place Wayne’s best work in the time range of Tha Carter through The Drought Is Over 2 mixtape (though I suppose you could extend that through The Drought Is Over Part 4 and not really be wrong). Tha Carter III simply doesn’t pass muster. Wayne actually sounds tired on the album. Just listen to him sigh heavily on the intro to “Mr. Carter” (which is probably the best song on the album, and gave me false hope as the second track). He sounds positively exhausted, as if the effort needed to express himself coherently has simply become too much. One could argue that Jay-Z beats him on his own track, which is ironic considering that Hov’s verse is about passing the torch to Weezy.

In the same vein as Wayne’s apparent fatigue, he sounds out of breath on many of his verses, as if his rapping behind the beat isn’t just for effect, but that he’s actually having trouble keeping up. As opening tracks go, “3 Peat” seems tragically weak compared to what has come before—the epic “Tha Mobb” on Tha Carter II (Wayne’s best song, in my opinion) and the adroit “Walk In” from Tha Carter. The word lazy continues to be the most apt descriptor for this new style of rapping from Wayne. “A Milli” is fine, in my opinion. The trance beat grows on you, and the minimalist snares, bass and handclaps are perfect for freestyling. The only problem is that Wayne doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense on the track, which I am actually more forgiving of than many critics because I think it demonstrates Wayne’s love for individual words and being playful with language. There is no excuse, however, for “Got Money” with T-Pain. Wayne should be above such fluff.
The aforementioned “Comfortable” with Babyface is a standout, as is the other Kanye West produced track “Let The Beat Build.” West’s production seems to fit Wayne’s flow quite well, though the latter track shows the same signs of mental stumbling by Wayne that are apparent throughout Tha Carter III. Production is actually a major sticking point for me with Tha Carter III. Now, I don’t have a huge problem with Mannie Fresh, but he’s far from my favourite producer, and too much of his stuff sounds identical. So when Wayne broke from him for Tha Carter II, I think it might have been one of his best career moves. For that album he culled a wide variety of beats from a handful of mostly unknown southern producers. The end result was a fantastic sonic landscape for the rapper to navigate. Naturally, with Wayne’s increased fame, Tha Carter III would feature appropriately famous producers. The end result this time, however, is a mish-mash of cookie-cutter and just plain bad. “Dr. Carter” and “Phone Home”—two of the weakest tracks on the album—suffer from production missteps by Swizz Beatz and Cool and Dre. The former isn’t outwardly grating, but simply has no life to it, while the latter contains a hook so obnoxious that one has to wonder what Dre was hearing through those headphones. Similarly, “La La,” produced by the ever-insane David Banner, only leaves one wishing that the original “La La La” had made the album.
The rest of the album is made up of a handful of tracks that are merely good, falling short of great, and not even approaching epic. The message of “Tie My Hands” shows social maturation on the part of Wayne, but Robin Thicke is ultimately an R&B producer and his beats are almost always too laid back for a Hip-Hop album (though the jazzed-up “Shooter” from Tha Carter II came closer than most to a successful crossover). “Shoot Me Down” is positively chilling and largely a success. “Playing With Fire” isn’t quite as good, but Wayne’s comparison of himself to MLK is frighteningly passionate, and his third verse is a rerecording of one from The Drought Is Over 2 song “World Of Fantasy.” (It’s hard to blame him for this transfer of old material; it’s probably one of his best verses and it works really well with this beat.) Wayne is easily outshone on “You Ain’t Got Nuthin,” which demonstrates that his good friend Juelz Santana is perhaps the next to watch for the title of Best Rapper Alive, and the closing track “Don’t Get It” is a moderately entertaining high, rambling rant, though it’s somewhat misplaced here (one wishes he had just stuck to rapping on the track; it’s a nice beat). And then the album ends, and I think to myself, “That’s it? That’s what everyone waited years for? What happened?”

This is the realest review I’ve found yet of Tha Carter III (http://www.tinymixtapes.com/Lil-Wayne), and it purports that Wayne traded in his title of “Best Rapper Alive” for the moniker of “Biggest Rapper Alive.” That’s hard to argue with. At the very least, he had a change of heart since he recorded “Tha Mobb,” in which he rapped: “Crossover? Whatever. Mainstream? No!” Tracks like “Got Money” and “Lollipop” are about as mainstream as they come. Of course, now Wayne is richer than ever before, and it’s hard to criticize him for following the paper. Furthermore, compared to some of the stuff that’s put out these days, Tha Carter III is not actually a bad album. It’s just a disappointment compared to what has come before in Lil Wayne’s career. Now, I’m not going to say that Wayne can never regain his former greatness; stale artists find ways to reinvent themselves all the time. Personally, I would like to see him take some time off and step away from the mic for a little bit. As it is, he’s stretched himself too thin and diluted his material by oversaturating the market. Maybe he can spend some more time in his hometown of New Orleans, which he moved away from for a long time after Katrina destroyed his home. I think he still has more to say, but needs to take a rest for a little while. There have been rumours and indications from the man himself that he wants to become an R&B singer. If that’s the case, then I wish him all the best. Maybe he can breathe new life into that game, as well. Of course, on one of his own remixes to “A Millie” (pretty much every rapper in existence has one now—a testament to how nice the beat is) he says that he’s celebrating Tha Carter III’s impressive sales by starting work on Tha Carter 4. Whatever. I’m not going to protest that, either. In fact, no matter what he decides to do, I’ll probably follow Wayne’s career through its entirety. He’s certainly made things interesting thus far.