Lil Wayne behind on hip-hop after Rikers

In the flurry of mix tapes preceding Lil Wayne’s 2008 release Tha Carter III, New Orleans-born artist Lil Wayne solidified his position as the best rapper around. Tha Carter IV

Lil Wayne

Cash Money Records/Universal Motown

Rocks like: You just got out of jail

Grade: B-

In the flurry of mix tapes preceding Lil Wayne’s 2008 release Tha Carter III, New Orleans-born artist Lil Wayne solidified his position as the best rapper around. That was 2008. And if Lil Wayne’s eight-month stint on Rikers Island did anything, it made him ignorant of the enormous amount of progress his genre has experienced.

In the three years since Carter III’s release, Lil Wayne protege Drake redefined hip-hop, incorporating indie music sensibilities into the genre. Then Kanye West redefined the genre again with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And only this past summer, a kid who calls himself “The Creator” turned the genre on its head. Lil Wayne’s latest hip-hop endeavor — let’s just ignore that whole rock music period he had — completely ignores three years of genre growth and instead relies on the same tricks the rapper has always used.

Of course, this isn’t to say that Wayne isn’t arguably still one of the greatest rappers of all time. Even on this album’s weakest tracks, Wayne still manages to outperform many of his competitors. Tracks like “Blunt Blowin’” still find the self-proclaimed Martian dishing outlandish punch lines and T-shirt-worthy sentiments. The album’s shining moment, “She Will,” a ballad featuring Young Money heir Drake, finds Wayne making the sexual acquisition of a stripper a relatable experience.

None of the songs on the album are particularly bad, but radio-friendly “How to Love,” comes very close. The problem with Carter IV is that none of the album’s tracks seem fitting for someone who was once unanimously regarded as the greatest rapper alive.

If it were still 2008, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV would be the album of the year. Unfortunately for Wayne, it’s 2011, and the music is simply different. Wearing skinny jeans and skate shoes used to make a rapper cutting-edge, now it is just another cliché. Rap super group The Throne embraced the times on their most-recent endeavor by enlisting Odd Future singer Frank Ocean on several tracks as well as by sampling dubstep hits. Lil Wayne’s resistance to these nuances causes him to fall just short of that “king of hip-hop” title he once held.