After spending an entire year of his life in jail, Lil Wayne has finally released his highly controversial ninth studio album entitled Tha Carter IV. The album was released only a couple of hours after his closing performance on the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards.
The highly anticipated album features a variety of hot summer singles like “6 foot 7 foot” featuring Cory Gunz and “How to Love.” When it comes to the album as a whole however, it seems that Lil Wayne had more success writing and releasing songs from jail than with his new album, out of jail.
Already, Wayne has received a wave of tough criticism for the album, in which the Washington Post even commented on his musical downfall, saying “a few years back, when Lil Wayne was going around calling himself the ‘best rapper alive,’ he really was… And now, with his disappointing ninth album, Tha Carter IV, the 28-year-old has taken his foot off the accelerator.” Many listeners would agree completely, and when compared to Wayne’s previous albums, Tha Carter IV would be considered mediocre at best.
Wayne’s lyrics have plummeted in this album, which is filled with too much meaningless profanity, and inelegant beats that were at one point used to hook listeners. Wayne also lost his ability to relate to his listeners in his songs, as they only consist of money, sex, violence, and crime and less hurt, love and emotional conflict.
His worst song, titled “How to Hate,” is a bleak contrast to the summer single “How to Love,” which is poorly synthed with auto-tuned, and lacks any real meaning; it simply sounds like explicit nonsense to be honest.
His album was filled with star studded collaborations with top artists such as Drake, Cory Gunz, Bruno Mars, Jadakiss, T-Pain, Tech N9ne, Rick Ross, John Legend, Bun B, Nas, Shyne and Busta Rhymes; it is one of the few things that has remained the same with each of Wayne’s albums. This however still did not succeed to improve the quality of Wayne’s album, and Tha Carter IV recieved a D+.
Not including the summer singles of the album, the only song that listeners will not want to change after ten seconds is “Nightmares of the Bottom,” which sounds more like the old Lil Wayne with a killer beat and more of the meaningful lyrics that took him to one of the highest levels of stardom. This song is by far the best track off of the album and listeners should not waste their money buying the whole album in its entirety and instead solely purchase this one single song from iTunes.
