In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lil Wayne admitted he didn’t recall the details of his acclaimed “Tha Carter III.”
“I’m going to be so honest with you: I don’t know ‘Tha Carter III,’ ‘Tha Carter II,’ ‘Tha Carter One’ from ‘Tha Carter IV,’” he said when journalist Andre Gee asked him what role he felt the album played in his discography. “And that’s just my God’s honest truth. You could lie, you could ask me [about] such and such song, I wouldn’t even know what we talking about. So it holds no significance to me at all.”
The album, which dropped 15 years ago, houses some of the New Orleans star’s most transcendent hits, such as “Mrs. Officer,” “A Milli” and “Lollipop.” The latter two won 2008 Grammy Awards, for best solo rap performance and best rap song, respectively. The album was nominated for album of the year and won best rap album. With eight nominations, Lil Wayne was the most nominated artist that year.
The highly anticipated third installment of the “Tha Carter” series sold 1 million copies in its first week and went eight times platinum in 2022.
Even with the above accomplishments in 2008, Wayne said the year didn’t stand out among the rest because he’s working too hard to look up.
“Nah, I don’t even know if that’s when ‘Tha Carter III’ came out,” he told Rolling Stone. “I work every day, bro — every single day. And also … I believe that [God] blessed me with this amazing mind, but would not give [me] an amazing memory to remember this amazing s—.”
The memory loss could be chalked up to a massive catalog of songs — and years of nonstop work. The rapper opened up in 2013 about overwork and its effect on his epilepsy: “The reason being for the seizures is just plain old stress, no rest and overworking myself,” he said.
Since “Tha Carter III,” the 40-year-old has released more than 20 albums and mixtapes, and he revealed to the outlet that his computer drive dating back to 2010 contained a number of songs that it “isn’t even possible to even fathom. You probably got a million songs in one year.”
Rather than dwell on the past, Lil Wayne, born Dwayne Carter, has his eye on the future. He’s finalizing his second collaborative album with rapper 2 Chainz, “ColleGrove 2.” And he’s doing more skateboarding. The Times wrote in 2012 about the rapper’s brief break from music to focus on skating: “I picked up the skateboard and I thought it’d be a hobby and what happened is it’s a lifestyle,” he said at the time.
Wayne wasn’t giving up information on his “Carter VI” album in his recent Rolling Stone profile, but he did tell the outlet he would release a vinyl record for the 15th anniversary of “Carter III” this year.