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Lil Wayne

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The most influential rapper of his generation, and still the most quotable — a mixtape run that rewired the whole genre.

Dwayne Carter, known as Lil Wayne, is a rapper from the Hollygrove neighbourhood of New Orleans. He signed to Cash Money Records as a child and recorded with the Hot Boys before establishing himself as a solo artist through the Tha Carter series of albums. Between roughly 2005 and 2008 he released an enormous volume of mixtape material, including the Dedication and Da Drought series, rapping over other artists' beats in a style built on dense internal rhyme, non-sequitur punchlines and an increasingly raspy delivery. Tha Carter III, released in 2008, was a commercial landmark. His approach to melody, ad-libs and metaphor has been widely absorbed by the rappers who followed him.

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