Album of the Week: Lil Wayne’s ‘Tha Carter VI’
The Carter series has helped catapult Lil Wayne into one of the greatest rappers ever. While the New Orleans artist has veered towards other LPs, he’s always found his way back to the namesake albums. Ultimately, they’re the projects defining his legacy, and Weezy isn’t oblivious.
Wayne released Tha Carter in 2004, home to his hit single ‘Go DJ’. He quickly followed it up with Tha Carter II in 2005, with the albums peaking at number five and two on the Billboard 200, respectively. Then, he hit the big time in 2008 with Tha Carter III, as the album topped the chart and earned him his first Hot 100 number one, ‘Lollipop’. 2011’s Tha Carter IV and 2018’s Tha Carter V only bolstered the series, with everyone from Nas to Kendrick Lamar joining him on his victory lap.
On June 6th, he returned with the sixth instalment in the series: Tha Carter VI. Arriving seven years after the last one, the 19-track album features Big Sean, 2 Chainz, BigXthaPlug, Wyclef Jean, Mannie Fresh, Jelly Roll and Machine Gun Kelly. U2’s Bono notably appears on ‘The Days’, while Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli is a guest on ‘Maria’.
He also collaborates with his 15-year-old son, Kameron Carter, on ‘Rari’. He sings on the hook of the Wheezy-produced track, “I’m zoomin’ and I’m boomin’ like I got a sense of urgency/ It ain’t trick or nothing, it just ain’t the crossroads courtesy/ I show up to every game, ain’t injured, nothing hurting me.”
Wayne declared himself the “best rapper alive” on Tha Carter‘s ‘Bring It Back’ over two decades ago, following Jay-Z’s intended retirement. On the final track of his new album, ‘Written History’, he continues that same energy, rapping, “I ain’t gotta say this all the time, n*gga/ They know I’m the greatest of all time, n*gga.”
During an interview with Rolling Stone, Wayne admitted that he didn’t know his Tha Carter albums from one another. “I’m going to be so honest with you: I don’t know Tha Carter III, Tha Carter II, Tha Carter One from Tha Carter IV,” he said. “And that’s just my God’s honest truth. You could lie, you could ask me [about] such and such song, I wouldn’t even know what we talking about. So it holds no significance to me at all.”
He added, “I don’t even know if that’s when Tha Carter III came out. That’s how much I don’t know. I work every day, bro — every single day. I always look at it as the curse part of the gift and the curse. I believe that [God] blessed me with this amazing mind, but would not give [me] an amazing memory to remember this amazing shit.”
While Tha Carter VI might lack the star power and buzz of his prior entries, it’s clear that Wayne feels most comfortable within the walls of the series. He once claimed that Tha Carter V would be his final album, so chances are it’s a continuation rather than the end of the chapter.