Rapper Lil Wayne. (Universal Music Canada)

Lil Wayne is either the pride or the scourge of New Orleans. The answer depends on how you feel about a raspy, croaking rapper (born Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.) who hasn’t written a rhyme on paper in five years, but can record five new songs in one night; who is an impenitent smoker of dope and sipper of “drank” (codeine syrup); who has the words “Fear” and “God” tattooed on his eyelids, plus three tears rolling down his cheeks (to honour the deaths of three loved ones); and whose lyrics veer from cash, drugs and “choppers” (New Orleans slang for machine guns) to too much information about his sex life.

In its scale and ambition, Lil Wayne's newest album recalls the opuses of 2Pac, the Notorious B.I.G. and OutKast — mega-selling, landmark releases that altered the course of rap music.

Lil Wayne’s sixth studio album, Tha Carter III, is in stores today — it was supposed to come out last summer, but was bumped umpteen times. The disc is meant to seal the popular emcee’s boast — first heard on Tha Carter II (2005) and repeated ad infinitum ever since — that he is the “best rapper alive.” TC III is his put-up-or-shut-up moment, a 77-minute test of his claims to greatness. The final product is slightly less than the A+ the 25-year-old wants, but also the strongest proof yet of his capabilities.

In its scale and ambition, the newest Carter recalls the 1990s opuses of 2Pac, the Notorious B.I.G. and OutKast — mega-selling, landmark releases that altered the course of rap music. Funded by Wayne’s label, Universal Motown, Tha Carter III features a stellar cast of singers (Babyface, Robin Thicke, Betty Wright), emcees (Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Juelz Santana) and producers (Kanye West, Swizz Beatz, the Alchemist). It is the most significant major label hip-hop release of 2008, a last grasp at platinum-plus sales for an industry that allegedly died two years ago.

The cover for Tha Carter III. (Universal Music Group)

The album’s first commercial single, Lollipop, is already a Billboard No. 1. The song raises 50 Cent’s Candy Shop (2007) by a dime, despite falling a dollar short of Lil Wayne’s potential — “Shawty wanna lick me, so I let her lick the rapper” may be Wayne’s worst pun ever. A Milli, the album’s lead “street single,” is a 2008 banger that echoes Run-DMC circa 1988. (It’s also a popular ringtone.) The song doesn’t have a hook; Wayne goes hard over producer Bangladesh’s drum-and-bass thunderstorm: “They say I’m rappin’ like Big, Jay and 2Pac / André 3000, where is Erykah Badu at? / Who dat, who dat said they gonna beat Lil Wayne? / My name ain’t Bic, but I keep that flame.”

There’s no other rapper who sounds quite like Wayne (a.k.a. Young Carter, Weezy F. Baby and Birdman, Jr.); his casually off-kilter, almost hoarse flow is instantly recognizable. He sometimes races ahead of or lags behind the beat, apparently for his own amusement. Wayne is at ease rhyming over New Orleans bounce music, Miami booty bass, dancehall reggae, radio pop or straight-up gangsta rap.

It’s wordplay, though, that sets him apart. Weezy throws punchlines like jabs, such as “I’ve been through it all, the fails, the falls / I’m like Niagara, but I got right back up like Viagra” or “Hit him with the Glock, put him in a coma / Now what that boy got? Umm, glaucoma.” Some of his songs are deeply weird: the 2007 track I Feel Like Dying was rumoured to feature backmasking, and included vocals like “I’m at the top of the top, but still I climb / And if I should ever fall, the ground will turn to wine / Pop, pop, I feel like flying, then I feel like frying, then I feel like dying.”

Lil Wayne performs at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., in 2008. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)

If Lil Wayne didn’t exist, not even a screenwriter could invent him. His mother, Jacida (Cita) Carter, had Dwayne Jr. when she was 19. Dwayne Sr., his biological father, used to beat Cita; he abandoned her soon after their son was born. Young Dwayne started rapping with a group called K.W.A. — Kidz with Attitude — when he was 8. When he was 11, Dwayne met Brian (Baby) and Ronald (Slim) Williams, the co-founders of New Orleans’ Cash Money Records; he soon began rapping messages into Cash Money’s voice mail, hoping to impress the brothers with his rhymes. He had a contract with the label by the time he was 14.

When Dwayne was 12, he accidentally shot himself in the chest while mimicking Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle in his bedroom mirror; the bullet missed his heart by two inches. (He caught another slug in 2001, when a jilted female admirer opened fire on his tour bus.) With Cash Money, he got his start as Baby D, half of a duo called Baby Gangstaz. Cita pulled him away from the label when his grades slipped, but he returned — now called Lil Wayne — as a member of Hot Boys, a quartet assembled by Baby (a.k.a. the Birdman). It was during this period that Lil Wayne’s stepfather, Reginald (Rabbit) McDonald, was abducted and killed. Baby stepped in as his surrogate dad. When Wayne was 16, he became a papa himself. He now calls his daughter, Reginae Carter, the “little general” of his life.

Wayne’s solo debut, The Block Is Hot (1999), was boilerplate gangsta music that barely hinted at the verbal acrobatics to follow; Lights Out (2000) and 500 Degreez (2002) supplied more of the same. By Tha Carter (2004), however, Wayne had shed his teenage skin. The prodigy’s squeaky voice had matured, and he’d improved dramatically as a lyricist. Go DJ, Tha Carter’s high-water mark, hit No. 14 on U.S. charts. Lil Wayne had arrived.

He hasn’t left. After The Carter II came out, Weezy — who is most comfortable inside a recording studio, "drank" in hand — became the busiest mix tape rapper and guest vocalist in American music. A hot Lil Wayne verse is now worth its weight in gold sales. He charges $100,000 US per cameo, although he offers a 25 per cent discount if he particularly enjoys the song or its beat. “I wouldn’t do a song for my sister for less than $75,000,” he has said. (He doesn’t have a sister.)

Lil Wayne, right, performs with rapper Lloyd during BET's show 106 & Park in 2007 in New York. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)

“Greetings from the planet Weezy,” a severely Auto-Tuned voice coos midway through Tha Carter III. It’s from Phone Home, a bizarre song about the celestial distinctions between the adult Wayne (“We are not the same, I am a Martian”) and lesser emcees: “They can’t get on my system cause my system is the solar / I am so far from the othars, I mean others / I can eat them for supper, get in my spaceship and hover.” The track Mr. Carter pairs Wayne with Sean (Jay-Z) Carter, one of the few emcees whom Wayne admits to admiring. Here, Jay-Z plays the sage father figure: “As I share mike time with my heir / Young Carter, go farther, go further, go harder” Torch passed.

Indeed, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint (2001) seems to be Tha Carter III’s main source of inspiration. The former achieved classic status by meshing club tracks, street anthems, radio hits and slow-motion dance numbers into a cohesive package. Tha Carter III attempts the same trick, offering at least one song to satisfy each of hip hop’s fractured constituencies. The songs Got Money and Tie My Hands — the latter a Hurricane Katrina dirge that soars on a spectacular vocal performance by Robin Thicke — have every chance of duplicating Lollipop’s mainstream success. Dontgetit, the 10-minute closer, targets rap’s social justice crowd: Wayne slows his flow to a drawl, latching on to a sample of Nina Simone’s Misunderstood. His lyrics rail at injudicious drug policing, lopsided incarceration rates and Rev. Al Sharpton (“the type who gets off by gettin’ on other people”).

There is less bare-bones rhyming on Tha Carter III than Lil Wayne’s recent mix tapes — a disparity that’s sure to get him knocked around on online forums. But You Ain’t Got Nuthin, the album track that’s intended for hardcore rhyme junkies, does more to justify his braggadocio than almost anything else post-Carter II. The song is a brutal lesson in microphone control for New York emcees Juelz Santana and Fabolous — Weezy lets his guests go first, then unleashes a roar of rhymes that may signal the next evolution of Dwayne Carter, Jr.’s vocal cords. Through a fuzz of distortion, the voice sounds a lot like the current Lil Wayne — except it’s a bit older, a bit more sinister. The moment is fleeting, but it may well be the sound of the best rapper alive.

Tha Carter III is in stores now.

Matthew McKinnon is a Toronto writer.