In the last 12 months, our reigning Man of Next Year emerged as the most prolific, most compelling, and most bizarre voice in music. Lil Wayne is hip-hop’s ace in the hole, but is he working with a full deck?

By Kris Ex; Photographs by Piotr Sikora

It’s hard to believe that less than a decade ago, Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. entered the national rap conversation as the baby gangsta, the mascot, the light relief to the sinister head-bashing pronouncements of his Cash Money Records brothers the Hot Boys. But today, Lil Wayne—having declared himself “the best rapper alive”—has emerged in his second act as the walking embodiment of hip-hop itself.

In a post-album age where sales are tanking and the Next Big Thing is a YouTube video away, he has turned conventional economics on its head, increasing his value by saturating the market with his gurgling, clenched-throat verses and a Cheshire grin. Within the past few years, New Orleans’s new favorite son has guested on more songs than Luda and Busta combined, been responsible for more mixtapes than pre-Aftermath 50 Cent, and released more music than Tupac’s corpse. Surely anyone listening should be sick of him by now. But no. Wayne—who’s quickly becoming as known for his growing rap sheet and love of mind-altering substances as he is his mind-boggling output of music—has recorded close to 300 songs for his sixth studio album, Tha Carter III.

Somewhere along the way, though, Wayne turned into the very rock star he’d long been mimicking. He’s Jim Morrison now, the Lizard King, nihilistic and delusional and still gifted enough to spin it all into perfect sense. To talk to him is to realize he exists inside a world of his own making where logic is upended: hoes become housewives, surrogate fathers get kissed on the lips, and raps don’t have to make sense. There, Wayne rules as an iconoclast, determined to do something new, but wholly defined by what came before him.

You make music like someone who’s trying to leave a legacy behind.

Lil' Wayne: Exactly. Actually, legends don’t try it. You gotta let them know after they gone or try to catch them within they last five years to let them know that they’re a legend and they have a legacy. But they haven’t let me know that yet, so I’m still trying…at the Acura dealer right now trying to get that fucking Legend, you know.

You don’t think you’re a legend to a lot of people yet?

Lil' Wayne: To those people I live for—my family and friends—and not because of none of these albums or none of that. Things that I do for them that they can tell you about make them call me a legend.

So if you were to pass away, how would you want to be remembered by the world?

Lil' Wayne: Tell you the truth, I ain’t got time to stop and look.

What are you looking at?

Lil' Wayne: That green-ass dollar sign, and it got a bright-ass light somewhere. A lot of people’ll tell you the bright light’s at the end of the road; why the fuck is it that bright if it’s the end of the road? I don’t know where the fuck it’s at. I’m trying to find it and when I find it, I had bought me like three more light bulbs and some, like, lifetime light bulbs. I’ma switch it out when that light go out, it’s so hot it might burn me…a million watts. I’m a Martian, yes, and if you understand any of this then you’re Christ.

You did a song with Nelly last night. What do you think about his standing in the game compared to your standing in the game?

Lil' Wayne: I don’t think about nobody else’s standard in the game. No level is higher than me right now in this shit. If I was going to watch where another person at in the game it would have been Jay, a few years back, ’cause he was, to me, the greatest. But as far as me watching anybody else, I’m all about me. Home // CELEBRITIES // COVER STORY // Lil Wayne