Lil Wayne once had plenty of good reasons to call himself the Best Rapper Alive. In the 2000s, the proud New Orleanian evolved from a promising Hollygrove street rapper signed to Cash Money Records into one of the most exciting voices in hip-hop. His boundless lyrical creativity and talent for clever, brilliantly raunchy raps delivered in a distinctively gravelly voice made him the envy of his peers and, eventually, a five-time GRAMMY winner and platinum-selling recording artist.
Born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., Lil Wayne summited the heights of the music industry largely thanks to a pivotal series of albums all titled Tha Carter. These records, released across 20 years, showcase the rapper's evolution as an artist, from hungry dirty south prodigy to hit-making party monster to mature elder statesman of the rap game. They also tell a story of stylistic change in the music industry, with Wayne's production choices moving from futuristic trap muzik in the early 2000s to bombastic beats in the 2010s to the moodier production of contemporary hip-hop.
Lil Wayne released the latest installment in the series, Tha Carter VI, on June 6. As the rapper divulged in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the record is centered around collaborations and trying new things. Older collaborators such as Mannie Fresh return, while Wayne invites the likes of Jelly Roll, MGK and even Bono to feature on the record. Those additions might seem strange for those accustomed to "A Milli" and "Uproar," but as a close read of the series reveals, Weezy has always been a transformer.
Below, dig into all six Tha Carter albums and how they've each contributed to Lil Wayne's ongoing saga.
'Tha Carter' (2004)
There's a lot about the original Tha Carter that feels a bit quaint from the vantage point of 2025. The beats, handled almost entirely by Cash Money's in-house producer Mannie Fresh, are a mix of Dirty Southern trap muzik and Neptunes-esque futurism that sound slick in some places and dated in others. It's sprinkled with silly party tracks like hit single "Go DJ," sexy jams like "Hoes," and even a multi-track tour through Weezy's trap house ("Walk In," "Inside," "Walk Out"). And yet, Wayne's hunger, ferocity and skill as a rapper pulls it all together. Tracks like "Cash Money Millionaires" and lead single "Bring It Back" demonstrated the musicality and cleverness Wayne would refine on later albums.
Wayne had a lot to prove on Tha Carter. He joined Cash Money Records when he was only 11 years old, and was in the process of shedding his relatively precocious image. By 2004, the then-twentysomething had watched the label slump from its peak at the turn of the century, buoyed by Wayne's platinum-selling debut Tha Block is Hot. The new record was his bid to try and save the Cash Money family from decline, to the extent that he scrapped an early version entirely (that record became the 2003 mixtape Da Drought). To a wild degree, that bid was successful — the record sold 116,000 copies in its first week, put Wayne in the Top 5 of the Billboard 200 for the third time, and later went double platinum — and it set the stage for further dominance in the coming decade.
In 2013, Kanye West would declare rappers to be the new rock stars, but to see him proven right, we can look eight years earlier to the second of Lil Wayne's legacy-building album saga. If the first Tha Carter was the album on which Lil Wayne became a mature rapper, Tha Carter II is the album that made him Lil Wayne — the record where his larger-than-life star persona finally came to fruition.
Tha Carter II is an album of bombast, of profanity, but most importantly, of lyrical finesse. Nobody but Wayne could come up with lines like "I'm hot but the car cool/ She's wet, that's a carpool" (from "Fireman") or this insane, borderline scatological couplet from "Money on My Mind," one of the wildest ways to call yourself rich that anyone's ever thought of: "Dear Mr. Toilet, I'm the s—/ Got these other haters pissed 'cause my toilet paper thick."
Nobody puts the "dirty" in Dirty South like Wayne, but beyond trap bangers like "Fireman" and "I'm A D-Boy," the record is quite varied, with G-funk on "Lock and Load," reggae on "Mo'Fire," and gospel-tinged rap-rock on the anthemic "Best Rapper Alive." Calling yourself that is a bold claim on the best of days, but Tha Carter II marks the beginning of a run that would completely justify it. More than any rapper before him, Wayne would exemplify the image of a rapper as a rock star.
By 2008, Wayne had become the face of hip-hop. He had spent the previous two years laying the groundwork for Tha Carter III with a now-legendary run of features that saw him all over the radio for months, and a series of acclaimed mixtapes including Dedication 2 and Da Drought 3. Now he would reap the spoils: Over a million copies sold in its first week alone, "Lollipop" reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and top tens for "A Milli" and "Got Money."
Tha Carter III is one of rap's greatest victory laps, and the album sounds as if that outrageous success was preordained. Tha Carter III revels in an atmosphere of triumph for its first few tracks, among them "Mr. Carter" with Jay-Z and "Got Money," a song so excessive and brash thanks to the formidable T-Pain chorus that it almost defines the phrase "recession indicator." The album's midsection sees Wayne trying on a series of lyrical costumes (he's a surgeon on "Dr. Carter," an alien on "Phone Home") that vary from embarrassingly corny to raunchily comical: Only Wayne would give a new definition to "f— the police" on "Mrs. Officer."
A pair of slightly less ridiculous tunes populate the record, including the romantic "Comfortable," with a sumptuous string-filled beat from Kanye West and playfully seductive lines from Wayne, and the more serious "Tie My Hands," where the rapper discusses the still-dire state of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
That being said, it isn't a perfect record — it's not the peak of Wayne's lyricism, and moments such as Busta Rhymes' verse on "La La" drag it down in the back end. Yet it's still one of the most thrilling moments in rap history, a decadent showcase of one of the genre's greatest talents as he conquers the world and an essential document of recession-era pop in all its sleazy, auto-tuned glory.
The years following Wayne's extended Tha Carter III victory lap were far from easy for the rapper. His follow up, 2010's Rebirth, was panned by critics and fans, and a litany of weapons and drugs charges eventually resulted in an eight-month prison sentence spent on New York's notorious Rikers Island. Fans rallied around the artist and sent his next album, I Am Not A Human Being (which arrived seven months after Rebirth), to the top of the charts; his protegees on Young Money Records, including future superstars Drake and Nicki Minaj, were also seeing success. But the stakes were high for his next Tha Carter installment.
Tha Carter IV shows the results of these difficulties. Wayne often sounds like a boxer on the ropes, struggling to get the next punch to connect. Sometimes he manages a furious series of hits: The Harry Belafonte-sampling lead single "6 Foot 7 Foot," a ferocious reunion with "A Milli" producer Bangladesh, was the first track Wayne recorded after being released from prison, and you can feel him releasing his pent-up aggression as he performs the kind of gonzo lyrical feats he made his name on ("married to the money, f— the world, that's adultery," "real G's move in silence like lasagna").
Hard work and struggles over losing it all are heavy themes of the record, which is rife with maximal, highly-produced beats on Rick Ross-featuring "John" and "She Will" with Drake. It's a record with fewer gems than previous installments in the series, but Tha Carter IV still shows glimmers of Wayne's prodigious talent while documenting the struggles of a difficult period for the rapper. As he reminds us on "It's Good," "This is Wayne's World, and y'all are just some tourists."
It would take an astonishing seven years for Wayne to release the next chapter of Tha Carter. That lengthy wait resulted from a multitude of factors: Legal battles with Cash Money Records, a feud (eventually patched up) with his mentor Birdman, and life-threatening health problems stemming from epilepsy. The finished project certainly shows the fatigued results of that long gestation, in both the era-spanning track list — "Mona Lisa" featuring Kendrick Lamar, dating from 2014, mingles with newer production — and a more mature, thoughtful iteration of Lil Wayne's persona.
The rapper drew on the nascent "emo rap" movement, including leftover vocals from the late XXXTentacion on "Don't Cry," as well as incorporating more modern flows into his rapping. Gone are the punchlines and quips of previous records, replaced with a frequently morose, reflective and perhaps even regretful Wayne seriously considering where he's come and where he's going. Even the album's big-hit stadium banger "Uproar," a Swizz Beatz-produced throwback to the bling era, contemplates "Where the love go?"
Tha Carter V isn't always successful, and it doesn't always make for the most entertaining listen, but it's easily Wayne's most mature and well-formed artistic statement since his late-2000s commercial peak — it takes a lot of guts to admit, as he does on this record, when you're not number one anymore.
Wayne frequently said Tha Carter V would be his last album in the run-up to its release, a promise he ultimately decided not to keep. After another lengthy wait, the rapper began promoting the record earlier this year, announcing the June 6 release date in a commercial during the New Orleans-set Super Bowl LIX. Later he announced a release-day headlining show at Madison Square Garden, but little was revealed about the record itself until the day before release, when he dropped "The Days" featuring Bono during the NBA Finals.
The rapper can command such attention and execute such minimal, yet highly visible promotion because at this point in his career, he's an institution. Tha Carter VI is built to reflect this with the most prestigious list of collaborators yet: The aforementioned U2 frontman belts an inspirational hook, and opera tenor Andrea Bocelli sings Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria" underneath Wayne's rapping on "Maria." The stylistic diversity seen in other records comes through, with acoustic guitar ballads ("If I Played Guitar") alongside bass-heavy bangers ("Bells"). Wayne even interpolates Weezer on "Island Holiday" and reunites with Mannie Fresh on the soulful "Bein Myself."
Yet the project is probably the least consistent in quality of all of Tha Carter albums. Misfires and baffling decisions abound, the goofy Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned "Peanuts 2 N Elephant" chief among them. Family emerges as a theme, both in Wayne's lyrics ("family first, family second, family third" he raps on "Welcome to the Carter") and in inviting his sons Kameron Carter and Lil Novi to rap on the record. But the growth and introspection he showed on the last installment in the series is thrown out in favor of more generic lyrics.
While Tha Carter VI is far from Wayne at his best, it still shows he's not content to rest on his laurels. If there's one thing that remains true about Lil Wayne a quarter of a century into his career, it's that he will never stop changing.