Tha Rankings: Tha Carter 1

Tha Carter 1

The first Carter is basically a Mannie Fresh / Lil Wayne collab album with Mannie producing ¹⁸⁄₂₁ songs (Although Walk In, Inside and Walk Out are all the same beat, you get the point). There are very few albums from the late 90’s to early 2000’s that DONT suffer from having over 20 tracks and skits galore and if you haven’t listened to the album in a while, the Carter 1 appears to be no exception on a quick glance. However, the skits are limited (only 2 with under 1 minute total) and there really aren’t any bad tracks. There isn’t a single song that I would remove in favor of a tighter tracklist. The bigger issue to me, is that it is no longer 2004 when 3 verse song solo tracks were the standard. Almost every full song on the album is over 4 minutes long. This makes listening through the entire album much more of a chore than it should be based on the quality of the individual songs themselves. For the most part there are no mind-blowing third verses, crazy features, tasty bridges or head bumping beat switches that warrant such long songs, especially when compared with the much shorter song lengths we see today. That said, there is a lot to love about this album. Go DJ is a certified classic and a fair amount of these Mannie Fresh beats still sound great today. Wayne’s flow on Go DJ perfectly exemplifies what so many people love about him. Effortless is the best word I can think of to describe how he switches between flows multiple times per verse. The BM JR verse that appears on Wayne’s Rap City freestyle is one of my favorites of his. I can safely say I love every hook on this project although some of the more basic ones can get a little old by the end of the third or fourth time hearing it (a problem that would easily be solved by removing a verse from almost every song). Although I don’t think Wayne’s raps are quite as refined as they are on Tha Carter 2, they are still pretty solid overall. He definitely shows elements that would come to be known as quintessential Wayne such as his rapid fire flow changing and unfair amounts of swag and charisma but definitely has yet to find a style that is truly his own. At this point in his development, I honestly think Wayne struggled a bit to carry an album on his own with so few features. With some higher profile features on the third verses of a few more of these tracks instead of three straight verse from an underdeveloped Wayne and you have a truly great album from front to back.

Overall: Although I love all of the songs on this album in a vacuum and I think it has the potential to be truly great, it drags on a bit too much due to long tracks, small pool of features and not enough classic level songs.

7