Lil Wayne’s career has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. From Cash Money little homey to established solo artist to bonafide superstar, he has occupied every step on the ladder. Most frustratingly, he has been stuck in artistic limbo the last half-decade or so due to conflicts with his label and his former mentor – Cash Money and Baby, respectively – and as a result, we haven’t gotten a proper Lil Wayne album since 2011’s Tha Carter IV. Yeah, he dropped I Am Not A Human Being II and Free Wayne in the interim, but those felt more like side projects and holdovers while we waited for the main course, which was the long-overdue Carter V project we were all craving.
In the years since Tha Carter IV, Wayne has still been active, recording and releasing one-offs with other artists like Drake and 2 Chainz (including what I consider the vastly underrated Collegrove), but Carter V has been supposedly finished and promised to the fans for so long that it was starting to look like it might never see the light of day. That’s why when it finally hit The Interwebs a couple weeks ago it ignited the rap world. We were all dying to see if it could live up to the standards set by its predecessors, or even hopefully exceed the somewhat disappointing Carter IV album. Considering how long this thing had been gestating, it felt like he needed to deliver in a big way. Continue reading “Stuff I Like: Lil Wayne – Tha Carter V Review”
