The Carter (2009)

Tha Carter IV might’ve gone straight to No. 1, but the crits haven’t been too impressed, many lamenting that Lil Wayne’s new joint lacks the swaggering strangeness that made Tha Carter III such a phenomenon. (Perhaps not surprising after eight months in Riker’s Island.) But if you’re looking for the old Weezy, Adam Bhala Lough’s ride through Wayne’s world, filmed over six fly on the wall months as III broke wide, offers a deep dose – too deep for Wayne himself, who sued to block the movie after its 2009 Sundance debut. (At this writing it’s still in legal limbo in the States but widely available on DVD elsewhere.) Rambling and disjointed in a good way – style here utterly matches subject – The Carter finds Wayne alternately ensconced in Amsterdam and on the road, pursuing a hazy but remarkably productive creative path that somehow melds constant consumption of pot and “purple” (cough syrup-spiked soda) with a work ethic that would put most performers to shame: mic and mobile recorder are always to hand to catch the couplets Weezy spills readily off the dome (and invariably plays back – he never listens to any rap but his own). Immersed in the idiosyncratic internal rhythms of an artist who seems to live fully in the present and entirely according to his own beat, this insinuating doc burns slowly but builds surely, finding bits of revelation in a stonking live “A Milli”; misbegotten interviews with a poor Dutch journalist who has the temerity to bring up poetry and jazz (the movie’s Dont Look Back moment) and another who asks Wayne to envision his own death; or brief, quiet flashes where you suddenly remember there’s a guy called Dwayne Carter Jr. under all the layers of weirdness and weed.