His insane work ethic is as lionized as his skill, and Tha Carter V acts as a testimonial to that. At its best, Tha Carter V is charmingly retro, creating songs that range from pop (“Dark Side of The Moon”) to R&B (“What About Me”) to more hard rapping (“Open Letter”) to party rapping (“Start This Shit Off Right”).Īs hard as the past decade or so has been for Wayne, he has never been a quitter. Things get off to a rocky start with the bizarre, ghastly XXXTentacion collaboration “Don’t Cry” before settling into a sturdy groove and not delineating too much. Really, it feels sort of like what it is: the best version of the fourth sequel in a series. It’s certainly an improvement over Tha Carter IV -likely his least memorable album ever-but it’s also not a record that is going to reignite a second peak from Wayne, if that was the hope. With the arrival of Carter V coming amid that deluge of goodwill, what we have is an album that’s mostly pretty good. The latter, in particular, saw Wayne at his most introspective and vulnerable, a touching reminder that he was always more than clever punchlines.Īlso Read Drake Corrals Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj for Huge Toronto Festival Wayne himself has shown truly bright moments sporadically over the last handful of years, with memorable and intense guest appearances on albums by artists like Chance the Rapper and Solange. Dre’s Detox or Guns n Roses’ Chinese Democracy probably owes more to the sympathies and endearment garnered by Wayne over the years than any genuine belief that it could be great.
The difference between this and, say, Dr. But in other ways, its legend has existed on borrowed affection. In some ways, there was a lot for Tha Carter V to live up to. While he’s made the most of guest features and found a way to stay relevant through scattered songs, it has been a mostly uninspired period, and that’s to say nothing of his personal demons, which include being imprisoned in Rikers Island, near-death incidents, and the one thing no one really saw coming: his divorce from Cash Money records and his father figure Bryan “Birdman” Williams.
#LIL WAYNE NO QUITTER FULL#
Since his 2008 breakthrough Tha Carter III solidified him as an all-time pop star, Wayne has not since released a full project that reached the same highs critically or commercially. This decade has been an inconsistent one for the man who once rightfully never let you forget that he was the best rapper alive. And for a while, it seemed better that way. How can the reality of something ever live up to the legend? Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V -released on Friday after a half-decade of gestation-spent so much of its history being whispered about, delayed, delayed again, and maybe even cancelled that at times it seemed just as likely to end up a myth than an actual tangible thing.