Lamar-who so idolized Lil Wayne that one of his pre-stardom mixtapes, 2009’s C4, consisted mainly of remixes of Carter III songs-has long been one of the best arguments for Wayne’s pervasive influence. So Tha Carter V doesn’t fully come alive until track 8, “Mona Lisa” featuring Kendrick Lamar. Nicki Minaj, who blubbered in April that Migos cruelly removed the portion of her “MotorSport” guest spot that she sang, finally gets to sing to her heart’s content on “Dark Side of the Moon,” which is more tolerable than it seems like it should be but still an odd choice for the first half of the album.
The first seven tracks include a tearful two-minute interlude from Wayne’s mother Cita that would’ve held more weight as a more brief excerpt, and dreary mid-tempo tracks featuring Travis Scott and the late XXXTentacion that seem to exist primarily to situate Wayne in the 2018 Soundcloud rap zeitgeist that he influenced but was never a part of. You could probably chop the entire opening quarter of Tha Carter V off and improve the album. It’s hard to say that a guy who’s been piling up material for years, who once completely upended notions of how much material a major rap star could release, hasn’t earned the right to make a long album. The idea that the 79-minute rap albums of the CD era were too indulgent is being quickly buried under a digital mountain of overgrown albums that won’t waste any vinyl or plastic, but will waste a lot of your time. At 87 minutes, Tha Carter V is the longest album Lil Wayne has ever released, but it’s still shorter than albums released this year by Migos, Drake, Rae Sremmurd, Lupe Fiasco, and Snoop Dogg.
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