On This day in 2008, Lil Wayne released the third installment of his Tha Carter album series. While we saw Weezy use that raw New Orleans sound on the first two Carter albums, he started to experiment more on the mainstream side on this project on records such as ‘Lollipop‘ featuring Static Major and ‘Ms. Officer‘ featuring Bobby Valentino.
Tha Carter III had 16 tracks and had appearances by Jay-Z, T-Pain, Robin Thicke, Busta Rhymes, Fabolous, Juelz Santana, and more. While Lollipop and Ms. Officer were chart-toppers, ‘A Milli‘ was also a fan-favorite. The video for the record was just as entertaining as it displayed Wayne on set of a music getting ready for one.
Following Tha Carter III’s release, it immediately reached the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart as it sold 1,006,000 copies in its first week. It is now triple-platinum and sold 3.6 copies in the United States. Lollipop was on the Billboard Hot 100 for five non-consecutive weeks. ‘Get Money‘ featuring T-Pain also cracked the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
Tha Carter III also dominated award shows. It was nominated at the Grammys in 2009 for Album of the Year and won Best Rap Album. Lollipop also won Best Rap Song and A Milli won Best Rap Solo Performance.
Tha Carter III was also very successful in reaching a mainstream fan base for Wayne. Tha Carters 1 and II appealed to predominantly hip-hop fans but the third album easily crossed over to other genres as it was surprisingly enough to get Wayne to do a rock album a few years later.
Wayne would go on to also succeed with Tha Carter IV in 2011. Since that project, fans have been waiting for what could be the final and fifth Carter album. Wayne’s sour relationship with Birdman and Cash Money have caused numerous delays in that but since Wayne is out of his contract and got his money from the lawsuit, we could very well see it sometime this fall.
