Album Review: Lil' Wayne - Tha Carter III

Here's the Rolling Stone album review that broke Lil Wayne to the mainstream as "The Greatest Rapper Alive".

Rating: 4 1/2 Stars out of 5

OK, it's true: he really is the best rapper alive. Lil Wayne made that claim on his last official CD, in 2005, and since then, he's unleashed an astonishing torrent of mixtapes, leaks and guest appearances to back up the boast. So his long-anticipated "legit" album follow-up feels a bit gratuitous. Still, Tha Carter III is useful as an exclamation point. It establishes beyond a doubt that the zeitgeist in 2008 belongs to one artist: a dreadlocked dadaist poet from New Orleans with a bad weed habit and a voice like a bullfrog. As Wayne croaks in the woozy "3Peat," "Get on my level/You can't get on my level/You will need a space shuttle/Or a ladder that's forever."



Wayne has taken the task of album-making seriously: This isn't a mixtape, it's a suite of songs, paced and sequenced for maxaqimum impact. He's collected sleek, powerful beats from top producers (Kanye West, Swizz Beatz), enlisted A-list guest stars (Jay-Z, T-Pain) and served up a range of textures and moods, from the elegiac Hurricane Katrina protest "Tie My Hands" to the bubblegum bumper "Lollipop," in which Weezy has a laugh at selling out by creating the most outrageously pumped-up sellout single in history. Thematically, Carter III is a victory lap. In the hilarious "Dr Carter," he boasts about resuscitating hip-hop: "As I put the light down his throat/I can only see flow/His blood's starting to flow/His lungs starting to grow."

As usual, Wayne's tumbling freestyle rhymes are full of imagination and surprise, but his voice itself is half the fun. He shouts, gasps, tries a Caribbean patois, sings snatches of "Umbrella" and "Irreplaceable," and impersonates E.T. He loves that brother-from-another-planet stuff —"I am a Martian," he raps —but it's clear he's also thinking about his worldly legacy. The album cover links Carter III to Biggie's Ready to Die and Nas' Illmatic, and he makes no bones about coveting a spot in hip-hop's pantheon. "Next time you mention Pac, Biggie or Jay-Z/Don't forget Weezy Baby," he advises on "Mr Carter." It's sound advice. (Jody Rosen)

Album Review: Adele - 19

In honor of the upcoming Grammy Awards--and so you can get better acquainted with why the nominees are nominees-- we're posting a few album reviews for your reading pleasure.



Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Like fellow crooners Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash, Adele Adkins polished her skills at the Brit School in south London — as good a finishing academy as American Idol. Her debut, which topped the British charts earlier this year, lacks the bad-girl brio of those grads, but it shows off a vocal instrument that smokes the competition.

Check out "Cold Shoulder," a lover's blues, produced by Winehouse's secret weapon, Mark Ronson: Over swirling strings and a snare pattern borrowed from James Brown's "Funky Drummer," Adele reads her man the riot act with a mix of Memphis-soul-mama swoops and cockney-street-punk stops. "Melt My Heart to Stone" and "Tired," co-written with veteran U.K. hit-maker Eg White, are retro-modern R&B exercises with similar charm. On more sparsely arranged numbers, though — including a measured cover of Bob Dylan's unlikely pop standard "Make You Feel My Love" — her marvelous technique can become cloying, and the boilerplate verses on her originals don't help. Here's hoping the girl's storytelling will one day be as interesting as her phrasing. (Will Hermes)

[Via Rollingstone.com]