The man born Dwayne Carter was barely a teenager when he first signed to Bryan “Birdman” Williams’ Cash Money Records, appearing initially as one half of The B.G.’z, a group that featured a slightly older, if not similarly revered New Orleans MC, B.G. Lil Wayne’s star, was, of course, too bright to be contained in a group; young Wayne launched his solo career with 1999’s Tha Block is Hot, starting him on a path to hip-hop immortality, the MC having delivered both hits and phrasings—“bling bling”, anyone?—that remain canon in the genre. He rapped alongside the biggest voices of every generation: The JAY-Zs (“Mr. Carter”), DMXs (“Kant Nobody”) and Eminems (“Drop the World”) who dominated his adolescence, the Rick Rosses (“John”), Futures (“Love Me”) and T-Pains (“Got Money”) who defined the transition from the 2000s into the 2010s, and pretty much everyone else who thought wise enough to align their own creative practices with his in their moment. 2Chainz (“Rich As F**k”) was wise enough to drop two separate collaborative albums with him. This is to say nothing of the wealth of voices his junior who proudly admit to having refined their own artistry in his image, the most successful of whom he’d have a heavy hand in developing—Drake (“Right Above It”) and Nicki Minaj (“Dark Side of the Moon”). Wayne’s propensity for hitmaking, in fact, is not unlike the unending collection of tattoos he so frequently shows off, in that just when you think he couldn’t possibly have another, he proves that he’ll never run out of ideas, and there will always be a place for them.