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Tha Carter III was the most anticipated record of 2007. Lil Wayne just never got around to releasing it. In December, five tracks leaked. He released them as an EP and wrote new ones, pushing the album’s release date back to April, then to May, now June 10. The album leaked to the internet on Monday, and I’ve spent the last 24 hours listening to probably the record of the year, the most anticipated record of 2007 and 2008: a glorious 16-track opus of awkward stylistic shifts, sexy beats, offensive rhymes and confounding slurred preaches. Over the course of the record he plays a lady-cop obsessed criminal, a granny killer, a doctor, a chronic fellator, the greatest rapper alive, and a martian. There’s a song where he rhymes over a symphonic film score. He’s maniacal on one track and belly-laughing the next. Fans of the The Love Below will have a reference point, but the characters he creates never stray far from the man who created them: the one… the only… Weezy. This is not a circus. This is a journey.  If it gets a 9.6 from Pitchfork (they’ve been frothing about it for months), a 4.5 stars from Rolling Stone, and a 4 stars from Spin, ironic white people the world over will be championing Lil Wayne all summer long. This might not be a terrible thing; music needs a record like this. Comparing Tha Carter III to other highly anticipated hip-hop records of the past two years (T.I.’s T.I vs T.I.P., The Game’s Doctor’s Advocate, Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come, 50 Cent’s Curtis) one can’t help but notice Lil Wayne is having a fucking great time making this record. His enthusiasm for pushing boundaries reveals itself about once every minute. Like Wayne, T.I., Jay-Z, The Game, and 50 Cent were each trying to prove they were the “greatest rapper alive.” Weezy succeeds where the others did not for one basic reason: there is no doubt in his mind. A warning to those looking to snatch it up early on the file-sharing websites. Use the Carter III Wikipedia entry to construct the album’s track list. There’s about 50 songs on Limewire claiming to be tracks from this record.

Tha Carter III was the most anticipated record of 2007. Lil Wayne just never got around to releasing it. In December, five tracks leaked. He released them as an EP and wrote new ones, pushing the album’s release date back to April, then to May, now June 10.

The album leaked to the internet on Monday, and I’ve spent the last 24 hours listening to probably the record of the year, the most anticipated record of 2007 and 2008: a glorious 16-track opus of awkward stylistic shifts, sexy beats, offensive rhymes and confounding slurred preaches. Over the course of the record he plays a lady-cop obsessed criminal, a granny killer, a doctor, a chronic fellator, the greatest rapper alive, and a martian. There’s a song where he rhymes over a symphonic film score. He’s maniacal on one track and belly-laughing the next. Fans of the The Love Below will have a reference point, but the characters he creates never stray far from the man who created them: the one… the only… Weezy. This is not a circus. This is a journey. 

If it gets a 9.6 from Pitchfork (they’ve been frothing about it for months), a 4.5 stars from Rolling Stone, and a 4 stars from Spin, ironic white people the world over will be championing Lil Wayne all summer long. This might not be a terrible thing; music needs a record like this. Comparing Tha Carter III to other highly anticipated hip-hop records of the past two years (T.I.’s T.I vs T.I.P., The Game’s Doctor’s Advocate, Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come, 50 Cent’s Curtis) one can’t help but notice Lil Wayne is having a fucking great time making this record. His enthusiasm for pushing boundaries reveals itself about once every minute.

Like Wayne, T.I., Jay-Z, The Game, and 50 Cent were each trying to prove they were the “greatest rapper alive.” Weezy succeeds where the others did not for one basic reason: there is no doubt in his mind.

A warning to those looking to snatch it up early on the file-sharing websites. Use the Carter III Wikipedia entry to construct the album’s track list. There’s about 50 songs on Limewire claiming to be tracks from this record.