Tha Carter IV will almost certainly fail to match the pop culture domination of Tha Carter III, and that might be the best thing going for it. III was an event by necessity, the culmination of an unprecedented artistic transformation that mostly occurred out of the eye of the mainstream. IV comes from the opposite trajectory of very public failures: Wayne’s No. 1 spot was eclipsed by labelmates Nicki Minaj and Drake; he served an eight-month prison stint for gun possession, issued mixtapes of wildly varying quality and put out two anticlimactic commercial releases, one being Rebirth, a nu-metal disaster that unintentionally doubled as an effective anti-cough syrup PSA. The scattershot, yet unyielding output caused equal worry that Wayne was either doing too many drugs or not doing enough. Fittingly, Tha Carter IV stays within that sort of confusing middle ground, simultaneously labored over and rushed, nowhere near as bad as it should’ve been, but also not as good as it could’ve been, completely valuated by your expectations.

Despite how many of these tracks were previously available as singles, what’s surprising is how little this sounds like a pop concession — soppy loverman joint “How To Love” gave IV… read more »