People legit expected Lil Wayne to save hip-hop. Remember when part of the album leaked a year early and Wayne’s response was to add some tracks and release it as an official EP ? Everyone wanted a piece of III and the demand was so huge, Wayne knew he could throw out tracks from the session at will and still have a hit. But in 2008, the release of Tha Carter III held the attention of an industry. Wayne sings the hook to Rihanna's “Umbrella” and, at the start of “Got Money,” arguably the album’s biggest club hit, Wayne screams, “I need a Winn-Dixie grocery bag full of money right now to the V.I.P.” On any other record, these could be isolated riffs on humor or just symptoms of good times and too much Promethazine. Take, for example, this lyric: “I do this shit for my clique like Adam Sandler,” or the fact that he tries to summon Beetlejuice by saying his name three times. It would go on to influence a generation of hip-hop by showing MCs how to be stupid again. Upon release, Tha Carter III defied expectations. He wrote, “Swagger tighter than a yeast infection.” I don’t think someone trying to carry hip-hop on his back as a serious artist writes that. Wayne wrote a relationship song where the metaphor is police brutality. They wanted an opus and they got a rubber chicken.

It’s a nasily laugh at a hip-hop industry begging Wayne to make good on the trending maturity of the first two Carter albums. Leaked in 2007, then released as an official/unofficial mixtape later that same year, then officially released in 2008, this kaleidoscope vision of Wayne’s world (party on) is one of the most creative, fun, lazy, funny, frustrating, bizarre, etc. At 3.8 million units sold and counting, Tha Carter III has got to be the best selling comedy album of all time.

The carter 3 mixtape lil wayne