‘Billboard Unfiltered’: Reviewing Lil Wayne’s ‘Tha Carter VI’ & His All-Time Ranking in Rap

Billboard Unfiltered is back with a reimagined format and will remain a live show every Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. ET.

Staff writer Kyle Denis, senior director R&B/hip-hop Carl Lamarre and senior charts analyst Trevor Anderson returned with new moderator Delisa Shannon on Wednesday (June 11) as the trio debated the early returns of Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter VI, and all three skewed to various degrees of a negative reception to Weezy’s latest installment in his decorated series.

Lamarre compared Wayne’s career legacy to that of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and said Weezy still remains in his top five of all-time. Although, CL believes that the disappointing album and his solo output over the last decade have watered down his discography.

“I need to fire whoever was A&R and executive producing my brother Wayne’s album because this is easily the worst [Carter] in the entire series,” he claimed. “[C6] was just a full trainwreck… When you take out the mixtapes and look at pure albums. From one, five and six on Tha Carter is mid — everything else is mid.”

Denis bluntly said C6 is “not a good album at all” and “a—.” “He spent the last year begging for sympathy by him not getting the Super Bowl slot and he deserved that,” he said. “This was the time to drop a fire album, get one or two hits off of that, and make your actual case for a Super Bowl headlining show next year. That’s completely shot now because it’s a—… You did not rise to the occasion.”

Anderson seemed to enjoy the album most among the Unfiltered crew, highlighting the first six tracks as standouts before being derailed. “I’m not gonna be that hard on it,” TA began. “Clearly, it’s the weakest entry in the canon… It didn’t stick the landing for me… I don’t know if this album really messes up [if Wayne is top five or top 10] for me… It does weaken Tha Carter series overall… But I don’t think it messes up the legacy peg at all.”

The conversation turned to Wayne’s legacy and Lamarre believes every top 10 rapper should have at least three classic solo offerings, and he thinks Wayne has two with the second and third installments of Tha Carter, but not much else. “I’m adamant about saying his [albums] discography is not as strong as people think,” he declared.

Ultimately, the trio wants to see Wayne get back to the drawing board and lock in with a singular producer like Nas did with Hit-Boy to bring that greatness out of him. When the dust settled, Shannon gave Trevor Anderson the victory in the first game of the revamped Unfiltered series.

Watch the full episode below.