Lil Wayne - The Carter V

Lil Wayne
The Carter V
2018
Spotify

Well after what seems like a lifetime of promises and legal wrangling Lil Wayne's The Carter V has finally arrived. Wayne would in one sense have you think this record has been sitting on the shelves for the years it's been in flux, but the features and beats clearly show more work has been done in the past year than Wayne wants to let on. The first full track features XXXtentacion hauntingly singing "Don't Cry" as Wayne gives his tribute to the fallen rapper who died at only 20 this year. The first sense you get of things being a bit dated is on "Uproar" which sounds like a beat from five years ago, because it probably is. To his credit Wayne sounds better than He has in years, maybe because this is years old, because as of late his features have been weak as fuck. He has some spring in his vocal that has been missing for awhile and settling his court case is likely a huge relief for Weezy. Travis Scott is another one of the younger rappers to features on The Carter V with his track "Let it Fly". It definitely sounds like a younger Travis in this song with his auto tune feeling like it is not fully dialed in just yet. We hear our first lighter flick on "Can't Be Broken" pretty late in the album for Wayne, but hey this thing is over an hour and a half long so we have time. The song with Nicki Minaj "Dark Side of the Moon" is such a ridiculous ballad, not to mention the lyrics which are so incredibly childish. It's like the two of them are writing a love song for the very first time and failing miserably.

The thing is without Lil Wayne none of the soundcloud rappers would exist, those are just facts. He paved the way for mumble and emo rap more than anyone else and allowed the current stars to shine. His absence allowed more people to thrive and imitate his style. One of the major issues with this record is that it is way to fucking long. Wayne might be taking a page out of Drake's bookt rying to break some kind of streaming record by putting out this massive record, but the songs to bang enough to warrant this many of them. What likely happened is Wayne has just stuck everything He has been doing in the interim and seeing what sticks. To be perfectly fair some of the stuff works; "Hittas" is classic Lil Wayne and my personal favorite track on the record, but the rest of it is to massive and too much music to get through. The hype for this record has been so high that it actually living up to expectations was nearly impossible. However, some of the record works and it's nice for Lil Wayne to finally be free to make the music he wants. Doesn't mean it has to be good.

6.6 out of 10