Lil wayne The Carter Full Documentary

Wow. After watching The Carter, the new open access documentary about Lil' Wayne, one might consider recommending it as the best documentary about a hip-hop icon of all time. The problem with this superlative lies in its limitation. Similar to labeling Lil' Wayne a rapper - even "the best rapper alive" as many profess - and leaving it at that, calling it a great hip hop doc limits it to the confines of a niche or genre covered in personal taste and stigma. That is to say, The Carter is first and foremost a fascinating portrait of a remarkable, modern artist and celebrity who has cooked up most if not all the bridges of comparison.

lil wayne The Carter documentary

In The Carter, we experience the exact moment Wayne quietly discovers, abroad and permanently, that his latest album, Tha Carter III, sold over a million physical units in its first week. As his friend and manager, Cortez Bryant, says on camera, Wayne now ranks unquestionably among the top pop stars in the world; and this doc ranks among the best of the year. It's also very hard to point to a precedent for a film so aware of a superstar's love of drugs and possible drug addiction. Obviously, the recent, This Is It, failed in this regard.

Lil wayne The Carter Full Documentary

Nevertheless, I find C *** sucker Blues, the 1972 doc about the Rolling Stones, to be an appropriate cinematic comparison in terms of access to excess. Especially when comparing each doc's stylistic preference for cinema verite to capture a lavish lifestyle of touring, partying and recording. Another reason for comparison is that the release of Blues was notoriously blocked by the Stones for decades. Lil 'Wayne also tried to block The Carter to no avail. Although President Obama positively references Lil' Wayne in his speeches, he is currently facing a year in prison on a gun charge, and the film will only add to that criminal reputation. A few minutes into the film - when I realized the massive number of viewers who will be watching this - I subconsciously began to rethink the meaning of "pop superstar" as it relates to Weezy. I intended to do so, but even after his interview on 60 Minutes, it took a bigger push thanks to the manufactured and horrible state for pop music's pop.

Watch also: Biggie I Got A Story To Tell Full Documentary

lil wayne The Carter documentary Trailer

Not only is Lil 'Wayne an artist whose outlaw sensibility has global reach - as he proclaims here - but he's a rapper who considers himself an amalgam of Kurt Cobain and Russell Crowe's real-life schizo in A Beautiful Mind; he's the only gangster rap icon to share a resemblance to a voodoo child and poetically have a crush on Topanga from Boy Meets World.

Directed by Adam Bhala Lough - he previously directed the documentary Lee Scratch Perry The Upsetter and the indie Weapons with Paul Dano - The Carter follows Lil 'Wayne as he travels in 2007 and 2008 to Los Angeles, Amsterdam (for obvious reasons), various concerts and other venues, and to Miami's famed The Hit Factory to record. Produced by QD3, a company founded by Quincy Jones III, son of the American producer legend, out of sheer immediacy, The Carter surpasses this year's excellent James Toback doc on Mike Tyson (Tyson).

And these two subjects share countless parallels: both are black men who grew up in low-income neighborhoods (in New York/New Orleans); both were involved in crime at a young age (troubled beginnings later turned into racially and commercially broadcast images); both showed tremendous promise and talent as teenagers and won awards (Junior Olympics/Album Sales) to presage massive success ; both had invaluable, fatherly mentors (Cus D'Amato/Baby) and money-hungry showmen (Don King/again, Baby); both have unique facial tattoos designed to elicit intrigue and fear; and both possess formidable physiques. I'll stop there, but there are certainly deeper connections. One big difference, however, is that Lil 'Wayne has incredible business acumen and surrounds himself with a team of tight Ziploc confidants. The doc does a good job of penetrating that inner circle, but it wasn't possible - and probably isn't possible - to explore the deeper end as a documentarian or journalist.

lil wayne The Carter documentary

Carter is enlightening because one feels that an artist with a lesser constitution would drop all the cares of the outside world and hole up forever in hotels in a sizzurp-addled abyss. Wayne's support system is there to handle and accommodate every facet except the drug-induced rhyme narrative. And there are moments here when Wayne's behavior has an unpleasant psychotic edge, not to mention an involuntary tic. Projected out of time for someone who was completely unfamiliar, if Wayne collapsed on the floor and got ripped in this doc, it would seem an inevitable conclusion. When he is shown sleeping, the images seem taboo, but it's also a relief. Like The Lost Boys, he's actually sleeping.

A real Reaper-shaded tension surrounds Wayne in the images that differ from similar, if posthumously released, images of Tupac or Biggie; Wayne is completely absorbed in the act and the idea of running down a yellow brick exit road. It's impossible to tell if he's ever considered the idea of peaking before 30. Right now he's 27, the infamous age assigned to rock's mythical 27 club, but what's reassuring and yeah, awesome is that Wayne clearly sees bigger and bigger things. ahead. Unlike so many artists and celebrities, the loneliness that exists at the top feeds him, and perhaps that's a sign of greatness.

He's a pioneer in front of the camera, and that's part of what makes his life here unfold like impeccably programmed chaos. We see Wayne experimenting on guitar (his rock album Rebirth is forthcoming) and drums, and singing the blues with a tortured croak. But rather than serving as a commercially complicit cover-up, the camera sees Wayne as an alien and vice versa. This alien element is key to the doc's success. Constantly, the film shows him setting up a microphone in hotels, studios, and on the bus and unleashing characteristic unscripted words that, at their best, delve into the aesthetic similarities between the brain and space. At times, the camera often seems invisible like a one-way mirror. This is not artistic grandstanding.

His wordplay is so spontaneous and strangely out-of-body in these scenes that it can feel like he's lifted the giant curtain, stood behind it, and returned. Stop. Record some more. "Repetition is the father of learning," he repeats in a haze, like a father sternly chastising all the current kids in rap outside of his rap group Young Money. Keep in mind, this is minutes after Lil 'Wayne informed a Young Money kid of the first time he had (oral) sex, an initiation he proudly calls "rape" (which he was, legally). Wanye implies that if the child aspires to be that great - and he won't - repeating his life is the only way to try.

Wayne refuses to discuss his own death on camera and says of the investigation, "It's stupid," from behind thousand dollar sunglasses and a million dollar grill. And yet, the most shocking and intimate sequence in the documentary regarding his uncertain future is with Wayne's daughter, Reginea. Wayne had her when she was 15 and she is shown here, a charming and happy schoolgirl. Interviewed in her room, followed by an effective juxtaposition of Wayne on tour, she tosses in a rhyme about her father that is inventive and murderous. Whatever is going on in Lil 'Wayne's mind, surrounded by racing matrices of soccer scores and dollar signs, nobody knows. Maybe she does? Let's hope not (although the idea of a future duet with Frances Bean is tantalizing).