Tha Carter 5 Review

There is no doubt that the famous rapper, Lil Wayne, is one of the greats. His new album Tha Carter V has been highly anticipated for a while now, since legal trouble did not allow for Wayne to release the album when he would have like to. His manager, Bryan “Birdman” Williams, would not let Lil Wayne release the album due to contract disagreements, and the rapper eventually sued his longtime friend and manager. Birdman countersued Wayne, and eventually the disagreement was settled in court, allowing for Wayne to separate from his former label, Cash Money Records. This summer, Birdman and Lil wayne reunited and settled their differences, putting things aside for the betterment of the industry.

After Wayne spent time improving his own label, Young Money Records, he was ready to release the album. Not only did the contract negotiations slow down the release of the record, the improvement of the album was extremely important to the Grammy winning artist. Originally, the album was supposed to be released in 2015, and 2015 music is vastly different than 2018 music. This time period forced Wayne to adapt to the more of a modern style of music., leaving Wayne with almost three years to re-record and improve his album. Lil Wayne finally released Tha Carter V on his 36th birthday.

According to Billboard, Wayne’s album debuted at number 1 on the top 200 and had the second biggest streaming week in history. The album had 433 million streams in the first week; these numbers are unheard of and have only been done by Lil Wayne’s best friend and colleague, Drake. Since the release, Lil Wayne has appeared on many talk shows and even appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The album has already sold more than 100,000 copies since it’s release on September 28 and is beloved by all of his fans.

At first, I felt overwhelmed by the 23 songs on the album, and I thought I would never get around to listening to all of them. After going through each of the songs one by one, I realized I had been listening to music for almost 90 minutes. Throughout the album, I felt several different moods. I felt sadness, excitement, and happiness, and at the end of the album I realized it was a true masterpiece. A favorite song of mine was “Don’t Cry”, a song by Wayne featuring the late XXXtentacion, who was brutally murdered by a group of crazed men outside of a car dealership. All the features on this album really came together to show the diverse group of people Lil Wayne worked with for this project.

Not only is this one of the hottest albums, it is one of the most listened to albums of all time. There is no doubt that Lil Wayne fans will be filled to the brim with new music for the near future. His devout fanbase has boosted the publicity of his album by posting dance videos to different social media platforms, and it looks like Carter V is not going away for a while.

By Adam Smith