No Vocoders or Mentioning of Cough Syrup? This is Lil Wayne, Right?

When Lil Wayne released Tha Carter III last summer, I was underwhelmed, at least initially. I was shocked by how lame Jay-Z's verse on "Mr. Carter" was. "Phone Home" weirded me out. I thought "La La" was obnoxious. I thought "Let the Beat Build" was just another formulaic East Coast-soul track, the millionth one in Kanye West's discography, and that "Tie My Hands" and "Dr. Carter" were a little sleepy. And the worst offender was the needless, rambling, overlong political-talk of "Don'tGetIt." There were certainly a few genuine treasures - most notably the silky "Comfortable" and the more-epic-than-epic "A Milli" - but, as a whole, it was a reasonably solid pop-rap album and nothing more.  

It took me a dozen or so listens, but I eventually warmed up to Tha Carter III - it remains a dizzying, sprawling, and incredibly bizarre tour de force, and no other rap album in 2008 came close to matching its thrilling eccentricity. It also made Lil Wayne an inescapable megastar, the guy who performs live with Kid Rock at the Country Music Awards, bowls with Katie Couric, blogs for ESPN.com, and is worshipped by legions of suburban high schoolers. In the span of two years, Dwayne Carter went from a critically acclaimed mixtape-rapper to the king of the free hip-hop world.

Unfortunately, C3 was the last time Wayne sounded truly motivated and eager. Since then, he's churned out a sad, endless array of druggy, unintelligible, Auto-Tune-heavy guest verses, and his good stuff ("Let's Talk Money," "I Told Y'All") has become tragically microscopic compared to the bad. Listening to his 2004 effort Tha Carter is an interesting experience: he was on the brink of stardom when it was released, and it was his first album to garner significant critical attention - for the first time in his career, he was a full-fledged, respectable solo MC, not the skinny little afterthought who embarrassed himself on Juvenile's otherwise-awesome 1998 strip club anthem "Back That Azz Up." Wayne seems to have realized this. Tha Carter wasn't his creative peak, but the kid's excitement and sheer infatuation with rapping is palpable. It's a beautiful thing. 

The album makes you realize just how stylistically experimental Wayne has been in the last half-decade: on much of his 2006 mixtape Dedication 2, he delivered his lines in a gravelly, almost mumbled monotone, whereas Wayne's later works had a trippy, unhinged quality. His rapping on Tha Carter is sort of a combination of those two techniques - he's more composed than he would later be, but he has an undeniably animated and idiosyncratic charisma, and his highly-publicized knack for spitting killer punchlines is firmly on display as well: "I'm slicker than the s**t I told your b**ch last night," "I'm like a pool table, I keeps the 8," "My n**gas call me little Russell Crowe for my beautiful mind." And, like all great rappers, he has the originality necessary to breathe new life into horribly well-worn concepts, as evidenced by the solemn, piano-and-violin-laced "We Don't," where his death-threats have a humorous edge as well as a chilling bite:

The murder man, picture me lurking
Right up behind your curtains, nine's squirting
And you could hear it when it's hurting
But if I hear him hurting, I'll walk over and murk him for certain
I took over the circus
Because I'ma act a clown if you put your feet down on my surface!

Yep, Wayne knows how to create an atmosphere - his imagery on the baleful street-life tale "BM J.R." is vividly nihilistic, and on "Tha Heat," there's a mocking playfulness in his voice that makes his brutal kidnapping narrative all the creepier. But, above all else, he's a really, really solid technical rapper: if you want proof, check out his marvelous web of multi-syllabic rhymes over the brooding funk guitar-plucks and nippy synths of "Walk In."

Still, he's a 21-year-old kid (well, he was in 2004), so, unsurprisingly, Tha Carter isn't an album of supreme maturity - when he isn't discussing his supposed sexual escapades, he's threatening to kill you. That's basically it, although there are a few sprinkles of introspection, such as the lurking, string-peppered "I Miss My Dawgs," where he fondly reminiscences about the times he shared with his Hot Boys group mates and calls for a reunion. Otherwise, you know the drill: he loves white girls, hates haters, and, of course, is the Best Rapper Alive.

And with his sonic backdrops on Tha Carter, Mannie Fresh - who helmed 12 of the 21 tracks - proved that he could very well be the Best Producer Alive. Whether it's the breezy acoustic number "This is the Carter," the chilly electro bleeps of "Go DJ," the beautifully blase, Al Green-sampling "Earthquake," the summery flutes of "Hoes," the glossy, keyboard-heavy sci-fi of "Snitch," the sleek jazz of "On My Own," or the tropical, guitar-and-horn euphoria of "Get Down," this album is an absolutely gorgeous piece of music, one Southern-fried banger after another. But even the beats, as beautifully-done as so many of them are, have faults: on Tha Carter III, every song stood out. Tha Carter, meanwhile, has a much more unified sound, and the cohesivness naturally gets a bit dull over the course of 79 minutes. 

Ultimately, Tha Carter is what I originally thought C3 was: a reasonably solid but unspectacular pop-rap album. True: it's slightly bloated, there is distinct lack of immediate standout material, and the subject matter is less than inventive. But it's still a compelling listen, particularly if you'd like to hear what Wayne sounded like before syruped-out super-stardom tarnished his creativity. Best Rapper Alive? Perhaps not, but with Tha Carter, Wayne had never been so close.

Track listing: "Walk In," "Go D.J.," "This is the Carter," "BM J.R.," "On the Block #1 (Skit)," "I Miss My Dawgs," "We Don't," "On My Own," "Tha Heat," "Cash Money Millionaires," "Inside Interlude," "Bring It Back," "Who Wanna," "On the Block #2 (Skit)," "Get Down," "Snitch," "Hoes," "Only Way," "Earthquake," "Ain't That a B**ch," "Walk Out"

Standout songs: "Walk In," "I Miss My Dawgs," "We Don't," "Earthquake"