Let me be up front about this: I had no interest in Lil’ Wayne before watching The Carter and I have even less interest in him afterward. Fans of the up and coming rapper will no doubt gloss over the crap in his life much the same as this documentary attempts to but that doesn’t change the facts of who Lil’ Wayne is: A musician with a scant handful of good ideas which he uses over and over and over again as a means of making lots and lots of money thrown at him by the always easily won over rap fan.
I went in hoping to see something more in Lil’ Wayne and indeed, The Carter tries it’s damndest to deliver exactly that. The documentary does everything it possibly can to portray him as some sort of musical genius, a guy so dedicated to his craft that everything he does and thinks and says is devoted to the making of more tunes. The film’s cameras follow Lil’ Wayne around in various cities and locations, as he travels the country chain smoking in hotels and tour busses. What we don’t see is the typical rockstar excess. There is no cocaine to snort or groupies to bang in this film, it pretends as if those simply do not exist for Wayne. Except they do. The clues are there, there’s a whole nother world full of bitches and hoes happening somewhere off camera, we’re just not allowed to see it.
Instead what we do see is Wayne, under the constant influence of syrup (prescription drugs added to soda), making music, talking music, and generally just sitting around stoned. Sometimes these scenes are intercut with interviews done with other people. We might see his sweet little daughter talk about how much she loves and misses him, or his manager talk about his devotion to him… and how much it hurts when Wayne screws him over. Again, the problems with Lil’ Wayne’s lifestyle seem swept under the rug. The movie addresses them in an only cursory fashion, so it can quickly move on to humping how brilliant he is as a musician.
Except even his musical brilliance has to be called into question if you’re an objective viewer. His lyrics are the same tired old stuff rappers have been doing for decades, mixed in with the repetitive things in Lil’ Wayne’s own life. Wayne is a creature of habits, everywhere he goes he carries a double cup full of his mysterious liquid… which he works into almost every one of his songs. He often wears the same t-shirt, bearing a logo suggesting that the cocaine should be put back in Coke. And in interviews, those are the things he talks about. The more you watch The Carter the more it becomes clear that here is a man with only one or two interesting ideas, and he’s milking them for all he’s worth. Sure he’s always recording and thinking about his next track, but the next track will probably be pretty much the same as the last one, and Lil’ Wayne will still be doing the same thing tomorrow that he was two weeks ago. The Carter seems desperate to portray him as a musical innovator and fans will no doubt watch this and declare that as fact… but I don’t think so.
