Hi, everyone. Howthony Whattano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of the new Lil Wayne album, Tha Carter IV.

Yes, here we have a new commercial record from veteran game-changing New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne, adding another addition to his legendary Tha Carter series with the sixth installment, obviously.

Now, looking at the current day rap landscape, you maybe wouldn't know it, but there was, in fact, a time when Lil Wayne was considered to be one of the best and was definitely one of the most popular rappers walking the planet. Originally cutting his teeth as a protégé of fellow New Orleans rapper Birdman in the '90s on his Cash Money record label, then really making a name for himself in the mainstream as Wayne developed this otherworldly talent for free styling, dropping numerous hits and classic albums in the process, like Tha Carter III.

It's also important to know that around this time, Wayne's capacity to rap on and about seemingly anything helped him achieve this massive amount of output, as when he was at his peak creatively, he just went on this just insane mixtape run that was truly unparalleled at the time.

So even if Lil Wayne isn't topping the charts in the way that he used to at one time, he was truly a pioneer for a lot of stuff that we just consider to be normal in the current day rap meta now. From his flow to the way he embraced this casual use of autotune as a bit of a vocal enhancer to his approach to recording his songs and putting them together in the studio. And he's really inspired everyone out there today, from Kendrick Lamar to Drake to Young Thug, to even young up and coming rappers who don't really understand that a lot of Wayne's ideas and impact – it's just the air that they breathe.

Now, with all that being said, like I alluded to earlier, Wayne's popularity as of late has... waned. And sadly, Wayne is not really taking the paradigm shift with a lot of grace. As, recently, there has been tension between him and Kendrick Lamar over the fact that Kendrick was chosen to perform at the 59th Super Bowl that happened earlier this year, clearly nailing down the spot due to all of the hype surrounding the recent W that he took in his massive beef with Drake. Super Bowl 59, though, was set in New Orleans, and given just how much hip hop has been getting ushered into these his halftime shows as of late, I think a lot of people presumed, including Wayne himself, that he was going to be a shoe-in for this performance, and yet he wasn't.

Wayne had feelings about this. He voiced them publicly. This led to a lot of discourse and dissatisfaction among rap fans. So all of that is much of the lead up to the release of this new installment of Tha Carter here.

I should also mention that it's been quite a while since Wayne has released a full-length commercial project that even begins to hold a candle to tTha Carter III. So I went into this new record wondering if we were going to potentially head back to a level of quality and focus that that album brought. Especially with maybe a newfound need for Wayne to prove he still got it.

And look, I'm not going to beat around the bush with this review. This album was pretty bad – not just bad, but shamefully bad at points. Bad form, bad ideas, bad taste, bad execution. The album doesn't even have the decency to be bad in one single way.

Like with the first big full opening song on the record, "Welcome to Tha Carter", which is like this soul chop boom bap combo that honestly sounds really classic, very throwback. Wayne's flows are solid, but upon closer listening, it's pretty apparent that whatever the soul samples are that are getting thrown into this track, they're AI generated. As you have the singers on the track singing about Tha Carter and the album we're about to experience, which is just a bit much, especially considering that lyrically, this track very much feels like your very standard array of Lil Wayne one-liners.

Following this, we have "Bells", and I actually love the beat on this one a lot more. It's like this late '80s B-boy banger. Wayne actually sounds awake on this one, too, flow-wise. I would say it's a highlight on the album, if not for the lyrics dropping off in quality on the back end of the track, especially around lines like, "And I don't smoke bunk, I only smoke that strong / Eyes tight like my name Wong Ding Ding Dong." I thought these like, I'm so high, I look Asian lines died over a decade ago.

But as weak as the initial leg of this album is, it feels like gold in comparison with the drop off that happens around track five, where we get this dramatic, heavy, acoustic guitar-based instrumental, paired with very whiny chorus vocals from Jelly Roll, of all people. The vibes on this one, like you could guess, go together like Sour Patch Kids on pizza.

The track "Banned from NO" has a very promising first verse, though. The whole vibe of it feels like classic raw mixtape Wayne. But what makes this track lackluster is that it's really padded out with a lot of chorus, repetitions, and refrains that make it so that Wayne doesn't really need to write that much on the track.

Now, what's even more surprising than the Jelly roll appearance, and frankly, even worse, is the track "The Days", which has Bono on it. Yeah, Bono from U2. The whole thing on this track, it just sounds like this stale 2000s pop rock rap crossover cut that would be placed on a Fast and Furious soundtrack or something.

"Cotton Candy" with 2 Chainz, sadly, doesn't save the record after this. Despite the fact that 2 Chainz and Wayne have made multiple tracks together over the years, they couldn't both sound more unenthused. I'm not even sure why the song is on here. It could be a leftover from one of their collabs.

Then "Flex Up". I can see the vision on this one. It's got this moody lofi beat with this linear driving intro that's building up to a dramatic crescendo. But Wayne on this track, much more here than anywhere else on the album, just sounds so high out of his mind and slovenly that he can't really nail the vibe of the instrumental. He just feels like he's on autopilot.

Then there's "Island holiday", which I don't even know where to start with this track. I mean, point blank period, it sounds like shit. This track sounds like shit. I'm not just saying that because the track is a horrendous interpolation of Weezer's "Island in the Sun". But there are multiple portions of the song where it just sounds like Wayne has five or four different autotune layers of his voice all singing in unison, and they are not in harmony at all. I don't understand why you would layer four or five song vocals on top of each other and not have them be in harmony or key or anything. It just sounds like Wayne is singing any random fucking note, and they're just piling them on top of each other for no reason. Yeah, I mean, really the worst way you could treat a song that, frankly, is not even one of my favorite Weezer songs. I'm not even in love with this track, and yet he ruined it for me.

"Loki's Theme" is yet another very odd detour on the album because of this weird metal outro. It feels like I'm listening to a Linkin Park from TEMU.

"If I Played Guitar" is this really annoying acoustic number where Wayne tries to get super emotional and crooning with the autotune over some very melodramatic chords. Not to mention the whiny bull crap chorus, where Wayne's knack for lyricism just doesn't translate over to a piece of music of this style: "If I played guitar the way you play games with my heart / I'd play you a fucking song that hit like Sylvester Stone."

Next, we have "Peanuts 2 N Elephant", which, honestly, for me, is a highlight. It's got this weird quirky-ass beat that sounds like an instrumental from a Super Nintendo game from the '90s, or I don't know, if you could 16 bit-ify that piece of music that plays in Looney Toons when something's happening in a factory. Apparently, it's produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Over this instrumental, Wayne is like his old self. He's just rapping a bunch of kooky, silly one liners, getting playful with it. Again, this reminds me of an older version of Wayne when he was out here proving that I'm a rapper who can rap on anything, who will rap on anything. No matter what the instrumental is, I will sound entertaining, I will sound confident, I will sound out of my mind.

Yeah, the track is certainly that. But I don't think this song is going to hit for many people, considering that I feel like the context in which this song would work best is surrounded by a bunch of incredible tracks and bangers and some of Wayne's best material to date. I feel like a song like this would serve as a detour in that tracklist. People would be like, Oh, he sounds like he's having fun on this little silly one over here. Okay, that's cool. But instead, what you have here with this track is one goofy ass moment standing among all of these just completely awful, awful cuts. It just feels like insult being added to injury. There's so much effort is going into a track that sounds like it's straight out of a fucking Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

The song "Rari" is a somewhat cute crossover with his son Cameron, where he does his thing on the hook. I suppose this is one of many mainstream, endearing father-son, father-daughter collabs we've seen in mainstream rap lately, which in concept are cool and I think have led to some neat and fun moments on some big records. But in this instance, it just sounds some weird independent SoundCloud producer just took a Wayne a'capella and remixed it with a Kidz Bop cover.

The song "Maria", believe it or not, sees Wayne rapping over "Ave Maria" with Andrea Bocelli's vocals going off in the background and everything. It sounds terrible. It sounds awful. This is an idea that I think everyone would have thought was novel on some level in 2002, but we're not in 2002. It's more than 20 years after 2002. There's nothing novel or interesting or refreshing about this, especially given just how lazily and messily it's assembled.

"Being Myself", while I do think the sentiment of this track is cute, there are multiple tracks on this thing that make this song hard to stomach, including the one where Wayne is talking about peeing on himself.

"Mula Komin" sounds like a very awkward and painful attempt at doing something current, which, considering how influential Wayne is to the current world of rap music, you think he would do a better job of being able to map over onto it, but he doesn't.

"Alone in the Studio With My Gun" is this pitifully sad attempt at a pitifully sad song. It features mgk and Kodak Black, too. It's just too angsty for words, and everyone on this song is too old to be doing this track. I'm going to say that.

And "Written History", while I do appreciate Wayne really trying to sum things up on this album and make a statement here on his impact and the legacy he's leaving, I just feel like this is a painfully inconclusive closer for a record that, frankly, is just so deeply unsatisfying and accomplished pretty much nothing outside of just solidifying the belief of a lot of people that Wayne just does not have it anymore, that he does not have it.

Yeah, I feel like that's all he's achieved and confirmed with this album, which is why I'm feeling a strong 1 to a light 2 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Lil Wayne, Forever.