Lil Wayne has reflected on his dominant 2007 run which included him being part of 100 songs heading into his commercial peak with Tha Carter III a year later.
Weezy recently sat down with his favorite rapper ever Missy Elliot for an episode of TV One’s UNCENSORED series where he discussed a multitude of topics including his epic mid-2000s run.
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“I was only acknowledged for 77 of em but nah it was 100. That’s real. That was an amazing moment and an amazing time. That was true,” he claimed. “I remember being able to get in my car and turn the radio on and I don’t care if I got the station wrong I could’ve switched to a pop station by mistake and I’m still on that muthafucka.”
Wayne continued: “To get around that fact is to murder and be undeniable and that was always my goal from day one. By being in a group, by trying to impress older people with my music.”
The “credit for 77” Wayne spoke about is in reference to a piece by VIBE where it ranked all 77 songs he was part of in 2007, including features like DJ Khaled’s “We Takin Over” and mixtape cuts such as “Something You Forgot” from Tha Carter III Sessions, Da Drought 3 and more.
Wayne putting in the work for a ubiquitous ’07 paid off the following year with the release of his Tha Carter III at his commercial peak in 2008.
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“I think that was the first time for me I started really getting that praise,” Wayne said of the time period surrounding C3. “I started really loving it, embracing it, at that time around that album was when I was seeing people in the street or hearing from other artists, so the confidence was strong.”
He also reminisced on seeing Tha Carter III live up to titanic expectations as the album became the fourth project in rap history to sell over a million units in the first week.
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“I come from the days we as in artists — we as in Juvenile and B.G. we checking the Billboard magazine to see where this and that. That don’t exist now,” Wayne continued. “When we dropped Tha Block Is Hot it sold like 114,000 or 95,000 the first week and that was the equivalent or the impact of selling a million and I remember I was like, ‘I can’t do nothing but thank God.’”
Tha Carter III survived an early leak and still went on to sell over one million album units in its first week (1,005,545) and debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
C3 features guest appearances from JAY-Z, Kanye West (production), Fabolous, Juelz Santana, T-Pain, Babyface, the late Static Major, Bobby Valentino and Robin Thicke.
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The 2008 album was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2009 Grammy Awards and took home Best Rap Album honors. Tha Carter III lead single “Lollipop” also won “Best Rap Song” while “A Milli” notched Lil Wayne a victory for Best Rap Solo Performance.
