In this process, it is necessary to accept that obscurity is likely inevitable. He does not fear the anonymity that may pass with his death: “Give me any amount of time, don’t let Miss Carter grieve // At the funeral parlor, dripping tears down my sleeve // Give me any amount of time, don’t let Miss Carter grieve.” With this final verse, the artist offers his audience with intensely provocative advice: deriving contentedness from success comes not from coming closer to immortality but from loving the work required to reach it. Wayne reveals himself as a fighter content with his line of work: “And I swear to everything, when I leave this earth // It’s gonna be on both feet, never knees in the dirt.” Then, he offers the audience counsel. Carter, and imbues it with potent new meaning. In the outro, Wayne appropriates a verse from Jay Z’s 1997 track Lucky Me, paying homage to his feature on Mr. Because Wayne has the capacity to say multiple things with incredibly short phrases, he is succinct enough to contemplate how his musical forbears perceive him, claim that his talent is visible to blind eyes and musicians alike, refuse to put faith in anyone but god, promise to annihilate anyone and his way, and assert that he dominates the entirety of the alphabet in just four lines: “Blind eyes could look at me and see the truth // Wonder if Stevie do? But I’mma leave it to // God, not Beaver, neither you // Cause I’mma murder Y, kill O and even U.” Carter is a display of a deep technical understanding of language. For example: “I’mma need a coupe, I won’t need a roof // Flyer than “Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse.” At once, Wayne claims that his prowess as an artist affords him expensive cars (a coupe without a roof), a degree of luminosity higher than that of the supergiant star Betelgeuse (flyer than Betelgeuse), and a cultural relevance rivaling complete ubiquity (uttering Beetlejuice three times makes the character appear in the eponymous film). Many, even internally, contain multiple double entendre. Each line is heavily referential to the ones that come before and after. Wayne then dives into a verse in order to claim this immortality, developing an argument based both on his asserted capacity to destroy all artists in his field, as well as the profound intrinsic complexity of his wordplay. He wants his music to endure: “To you forever: from me to you.” He begins by explaining his objective for posterity. Carter, Lil’ Wayne is after something lasting. As he reviews what he has accomplished, he contemplates what more he wants. Carter is the sound of a man who has reached a mountaintop.
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