Consumer Guide Album

Lil Wayne: Tha Carter III [Cash Money/Universal/Motown, 2008]
From the start you know this is no mixtape because it's clearer and more forceful. Every track attends to detail, with fun tricks like the chipmunk-chorused "Mr. Carter"'s sudden descent into screwed-and-chopped before Jay-Z comes in. But from the start Wayne worries about his image like a pop star, swearing he got shot for two songs running as if 50 was still worth a few bucks. Soon come the auto-T-Pained "Lollipop" follow-up "Got Money" and the soft slow jam "Comfortable," as pro forma as his laziest thug jobs back when he was little. So it's call the doctor--"Dr. Carter" himself, a rap-ologist complete with post-Yiddish "acchh" who will soon lose two impatient patients to their fakeness and his own do-as-I-say malpractice, followed by the space-tripping "Phone Home" and the N.W.A.-copping cop love of "Mrs. Officer." On "Let the Beat Build," Kanye compensates for "Comfortable" with an off-the-cuff fusion of grandiose and primitive. Also mixtape-worthy is the bonus disc, previously known as the download-only The Leak EP. Like the man says in the self-explanatory "I'm Me": "I know the game is crazy, it's more crazy than it's ever been/I'm married to that crazy bitch, call me Kevin Federline." A-