You can argue Lil Wayne was just as big as Barack Obama in 2008. He was on seemingly every song that came out that year, combined with an unreal mixtape run the year prior. Wayne was the definitive hip-hop superstar and rose to his self-proclaimed status as the best rapper alive.
All of it culminated in Tha Carter III, which was released 18 years ago today. After numerous delays and leaks, the final result was a formal coronation and further proof that the New Orleans legend was a master with punchlines. Given the high anticipation, Lil Wayne sold a staggering 1 million records in its debut week and notched his first number one album in the process. 50 Cent’s The Massacre was the last time that happened, notching 1,141,000 records upon its release.
Additionally, Wayne was only the third rapper to achieve such honors. Tha Carter III joined 14 other albums to reach a million in its first week. By the end of the year, he’d rake in 2.88 million record sales.
Part of the hype came from Lil Wayne getting ahead of his own leak. Rather than hide from it, he decided to formally release it on The Leak at the end of 2007. “We have to find out exactly what’s out there. I’ll probably just [collect] all the songs that’s floating around and make my own mixtape called The Leak since people want the music so bad. To tell you the truth, though, there’s a song I did with Kanye West out there,” Wayne said at the time. “Of course you want to save that for your album, but the rest of them songs probably wouldn’t have made the album.”
Lil Wayne Releases His Historic ‘Tha Carter III’ On This Day in 2008
The reviews were largely kind to Wayne at the time. Pitchfork gave it Best New Music with an 8.7, marveling at the incredible balancing act. “The epic culmination of a lifetime of eccentricities. This is Wayne’s moment, and he embraces it on his own terms,” journalist Ryan Dombal wrote. “Instead of hiding his bootleg-bred quirks in anticipation of the big-budget spotlight, he distills the myriad metaphors, convulsing flows, and vein-splitting emotions into a commercially gratifying package that’s as weird as it wants to be.”
Tha Carter III wasn’t without its criticisms, though. Tom Breihan of The Village Voice noted deranged inconsistencies from Lil Wayne, calling it a “sprawling mess”. However, he also stressed that no rapper could make a major label effort sound this animated and fun, either.
“On paper, this is a textbook focus-grouped major-label hodgepodge, replete with girl songs and club songs and street songs. But every facet of the album comes animated and atomized by Wayne’s absurdist drug-gobbling persona,” Breihan said.
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