Chasing Lil Wayne: Missed Interviews, All-Night Studio Sessions, and Brutal Honesty

I
t’s 5 a.m. in Georgia, and Tree Sound Studios is quiet. I’m in a side room of the vast, oaky complex near Atlanta, preparing to be the first person outside of Lil Wayne’s circle to hear Tha Carter VI, the album he’s been working on for six years.

On this mid-January night, our listening session was supposed to begin at 1 a.m., but it took two hours for Wayne to show up. Wayne’s manager, Fabian Marasciullo, an affable, stout Queens native wearing all black, told me that the hip-hop icon is doing some last-minute edits to songs before I hear them. It’s been a long minute. I ogle the labyrinthine recording console in the room. I wouldn’t know the first knob to push, but I have mastered the Keurig machine; I need caffeine.

Most of my time in Wayne’s orbit, chasing him across the map, has been an exercise in indeterminate waiting. I’ve already taken two trips to Los Angeles for interviews that didn’t happen, the latter missed connection due to calamitous wildfires. Last night, Wayne headlined a concert at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. I got an onstage glimpse of his set, but we didn’t talk. Our cross-country game of cat and mouse will continue after tonight, resulting in missed interviews, late nights that turn into early mornings, and a postponed Rolling Stone cover. 

But back at Tree Sound, I finally get the nod that Wayne is ready for me. Marasciullo escorts me into Wayne’s room, and I’m smacked with a weed stench as I cross into his musky territory. He stands near the door in baggy, all-black Balenciaga gear, with a black band around his neck not unlike the “solja rag” he and the Hot Boys popularized nearly 30 years ago. A gleaming platinum Cuban chain sits atop his shirt.

In the back of the room are Wayne’s 15-year-old son Kameron, in a pink Bape hoodie, and his personal photographer, Phillip Lopez. Across the room is a tatted-up Lil Twist, who’s been signed to Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment since he was 17 years old. He looks nothing like the baby-faced, mohawked rapper first seen when the label began assaulting the Billboard charts in the late aughts. 

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Wayne daps me, then mumbles something like “You here to listen to the shit” while picking a track for his engineer to play. Admittedly, I’m too busy processing the gravity of the moment to remember the specifics of the first song that I hear. I do recall an uptempo beat, over which Wayne spits furiously at his free-associative best. He nods his head feverishly to the track. 

After it’s over, he approaches and looks me in the eye. “If you got a favorite rapper, tell ’em ‘Suck my dick,’ ” he says. Marasciullo laughs uproariously. I’m fully awake.

AT 42 YEARS old, and 30 years into his career, Lil Wayne is still driven by the fervor to be the Best Rapper Alive. Born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. in the Hollygrove section of New Orleans, he was signed around age 11 after calling the Cash Money Records office every day, rapping into their voicemail until founders Bryan “Birdman” Williams and his brother, Ronald “Slim” Williams, gave him a chance. Decades later, after helping Cash Money become a Southern-rap giant as one-fourth of the Hot Boys, then becoming the label’s flagship solo artist, then helming the Young Money movement, Wayne still makes music every day.

When I ask about the last time Wayne went on vacation, he says, matter-of-factly, that “vacations are recording.” OK, sure. But how about an actual, chill vacation?

“I never understood that,” he says, burning blunt in hand. “What are we taking a break from? If it’s a vacation, you’re supposed to do things that you enjoy, right? So I take my music with me.” 

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And in turn, music has taken Wayne to heights few rappers can compare to. His 13 solo albums, five EPs, 30 or so mixtapes, and hundreds of features have earned him 187 appearances on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2024, his feature on Tyler, the Creator’s “Sticky” extended his streak of consecutive years with a Hot 100 appearance to 21, a record for any active artist. Through health scares, legal troubles that held up 2018’s Tha Carter V for five years, and eight months on Rikers Island for a gun-possession charge, Wayne is still here, creating with the hunger of a rap rookie.

Wyclef Jean, a key collaborator on Carter VI, thinks Wayne will be seen as an icon centuries from now. “You got to think like how people study Bach and Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Shakespeare,” he explains over Zoom from Paris. “He’s going to be regarded as one of the greatest renaissance wordsmith composers of our generation.”

“Do I feel slighted? No, I’m still dropping 30 points a night. I’m fine.”

Wayne’s disregard for norms helped him reshape the contours of hip-hop. His locs, body-enveloping tats, and colorful clothing made him a fashion maverick, serving as the mood board for hordes of young MCs to follow. He held it down for lyricists during the aughts’ onslaught of ringtone rap and snap dancing, and did so with a relentless output that redefined what “prolific” meant in hip-hop. Moody, crooning deep cuts like “Me and My Drank” and “Prostitute” engendered entire wings of nihilistic, melodic hip-hop that followed them. He’s tried his hand at practically every style and theme, even dropping Rebirth, his 2010 rock album.

Wayne’s history is still being written.  Recently, he’s fed fans via collaborations with everyone from Doja Cat to Lil Baby to Nas to Jack Harlow. In 2023, he dropped the album Welcome 2 ColleGrove, with friend 2 Chainz, and the mixtape Tha Fix Before Tha VI, an appetizer for Carter VI. It feels like these days, Wayne is more focused on bar work and experimentation than chart chasing. 

Beyond his artistry, Wayne’s no-ego approach as an executive paved the way for Young Money signees Drake and Nicki Minaj to become icons, and set up artists like Tyga for sustained success. His latest entrepreneurial endeavor is co-running his Young Money APAA Sports agency, representing more than 100 athletes, including the Heisman Trophy-winning Travis Hunter, set to be a top pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Like Jay-Z and 50 Cent, Wayne is a rapper-entrepreneur, but he doesn’t always get credit for wearing multiple hats. He says he doesn’t mind, mostly because he’s still focused on the “rapper” part, and uses a basketball metaphor to explain.

“Imagine you’re a player-coach still averaging 30 a night and a nigga asking, ‘Hey, do you feel slighted that they don’t put you in the coach-type of conversations?’ ” he says. “No. I’m still dropping 30 [points] a night. I’m fine being the best rapper, and then you just found out, ‘Oh shit, he owns [Young Money]? Oh, he put Drake out? Oh, my God.’ ”

THE FIRST CURVEBALL in my reporting occurs somewhere over the Rockies, on a flight from New York to Los Angeles to interview Wayne back in December. I’m told that Wayne has an emergency and needs to cancel. I’m assured that his health is fine; he just can’t do the interview. I fly back to New York the next day.  Then, in early January, I return to L.A. — just in time to witness the catastrophic wildfires spreading across the city. 

I head over to meet Wayne at a studio in Thousand Oaks. Several members of his team are there, including Marasciullo, who’s wearing a gleaming Young Money chain he got from the star as a Christmas gift. (Marasciullo planned to return the favor with giant-toe slippers.)

I hear a loud, urgent buzz from Marasciullo’s phone and think it’s another wildfire advisory; in fact, it’s his ringtone for a Wayne phone call. Marasciullo answers in speaker mode while walking out of the room. Before he leaves, I overhear Wayne exclaim, “I’m not doing that shit tonight — you see what’s going on?!” Wayne, I learn later, had to evacuate his Hidden Hills home, which was undamaged except for temporary power loss. Marasciullo returns to the room about 10 minutes later and informs me tonight isn’t happening. The next day, the Sunset Fire forces me out of my Hollywood hotel and back to New York. Last month, I got the cancellation alert in the air. At least this time, I hear Wayne’s voice.

Eleven days later, at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, the crowd is ready for the main event — a Lil Wayne concert just  before the College Football Playoff Championship game. There’s just one problem: Lil Wayne isn’t here yet.

It’s 11 p.m., an hour after Wayne’s set was supposed to start, and a dozen or so people — mostly members of Wayne’s team — wait backstage. Marasciullo paces while taking phone calls; one balding arena worker quips to his co-workers, in a Georgia twang, “You think I could grow some hair by the time this fucker gets here?” 

Thirty minutes later, things abruptly go from zero to 60. Three Atlanta cops dash outside to meet Wayne’s Sprinter van. Soon after, Wayne’s sons Kameron, 16-year-old Dwayne III (a.k.a. rapper Lil Tune), and 15-year-old Neal (a.k.a. rapper Lil Novi) file in. And then the man of the hour bounces in, adorned in a baggy black-and-white camouflage sweatsuit, black boots, a black beanie, and white sunglasses; I’d bet it’s all Balenciaga. His platinum pinky ring and lit blunt are competing to be the most absurdly large thing on his fingers. There are two Free Lil Durk T-shirts in the dressing room; later, when I ask Wayne about them, he tells me he didn’t know the Chicago rapper was in jail.

Fatherhood is a big priority: “Now, it’s ‘Make sure you’re there at those vital ages.’ ”

Atlanta Hawks greats Trae Young and Dominique Wilkins are probably the only other people who could get away with walking through the arena’s metal detector toking a blunt; neither would. The detector goes off as Wayne passes through, but no one gives a fuck. There’s relief and excitement as the previously scattered parts of Wayne’s ecosystem huddle together and form a wall around him, security in front.

About 10 of us briskly walk onstage as the lights dim. Just five minutes after he exited the Sprinter, the crowd pops to the opening flares of “Mr. Carter.” I was wondering the same thing as the song’s hook, which asks “Mr. Carter, where have you been?”

I have come to realize that time simply isn’t a factor in Wayne’s world. Phillip Lopez, the photographer, tells me that their private jet to Atlanta was scheduled to leave L.A. at 1 a.m.; they sat onboard waiting until Wayne showed up at six. No one I speak to recalls Wayne’s unpunctuality or late hours resentfully — they simply chalk it up as a feature, not a defect, of being around a nonconformist. Wyclef theorizes that he and Wayne are night owls because of their shared astrological sign (“Most Libras are nocturnal, man”).

In the Nineties, Birdman would take the Hot Boys to the studio to record overnight, and the routine stuck. Wayne’s average day ends shortly after leaving the studio, and getting breakfast while watching morning sports shows like First Take. He sleeps, then wakes up to dinner around 6 p.m. Later, I tell him that his schedule is the inverse of the average human’s. “I never thought of it like that. Thank you,” he says, laughing.

Wayne apparently got enough sleep to rock State Farm Arena with a career-spanning set. He plays a piece of “Back That Azz Up” and “Money on My Mind,” as well as standards such as “Drop the World” and “Uproar.” He brings out 2 Chainz for 2007’s “Duffle Bag Boy” and 2013’s “Rich as Fuck,” before continuing on his own. At one point, a snippet of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” morphs into “6 Foot 7 Foot.” Most of the crowd seems mid- to late-twenties and up, but is diverse in terms of ethnicity, fashion sense, and overall vibe. 

Leaving the stage to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” Wayne greets 2 Chainz and his aunt in the loading dock. They confer about plans for later that evening. “I’m-a call you,” 2 Chainz says as their two camps separate. Wayne, naturally, ends up in the studio after the show.

When I try to enter a backstage room where Wayne is taking pictures with fans, his security guard blocks me with his elbow. I tell him I am with Rolling Stone. He dismissively scoffs “Naw,” as if I had asked him for $20 instead of seeking to do my job. After the brief photo session, everyone exits the arena and jumps into a police-led cavalcade of Sprinters and SUVs. 

Wayne vows he’ll no longer consider playing the Super Bowl: “They stole that feeling. I don’t want to do it.”

THE NEXT NIGHT, at Tree Sound Studios, Wayne mostly lets the album speak for itself, hovering near his engineer and pointing out which song to play next. Sometimes, he offers a tidbit about guest appearances by Elephant Man and MGK or producers like Ye (who produced one track that may not make the album) and Wheezy, then he walks to the far corner of the room and jams out in his own world. He two-steps to some songs, and feverishly nods his head to others. 

I hear a track where Wayne deftly mimics the cadence of Biggie’s “One More Chance” and Tupac’s “Hit ’Em Up. (As of press time, only one song I hear has an official title.) Another track is an ode to “cruising through L.A.,” featuring a shout-out to the late Matthew Perry. (Wayne laughingly tells me afterward that he didn’t know Perry and only added him after researching a name that would fit the syllable space.) 

The album, due June 6, is the sixth in his canonical Tha Carter series, and it’s a testament to his malleable mic presence. Wayne rhymes over different tempos and moods, but always sounds like himself. Another song I hear — which, I later learn, likely won’t make the album — juxtaposes an idyllic riff with a gruff hook asserting, “Go hard on a bitch.” 

Wayne says that line is cribbed from a Birdman bar on an old Cash Money track. Wayne divulges that he’s still cool with Birdman, the surrogate father who shepherded his career until a 2014 contract dispute led Wayne to sue Birdman’s Cash Money Records for $51 million. He accused the label of withholding money owed to him and delaying the release of Tha Carter V, which he had already turned in to the label. In 2018, Wayne settled for a sum of reportedly more than $10 million.

Since then, however, the pair have patched things up. “Still Pops. Talk to him every day,” Wayne states, noting that Birdman often calls him for sports-betting advice. He thinks “time” mended their relationship. “Also, a nigga being happy for my success,” he says. “[He] gave me the ball years ago and told me, ‘Go ahead. Now show me the end zone.’ ”

One big Billboard-chart swing I hear is “These Are the Days,” featuring Wayne’s son Kameron and Bono. The U2 vocalist sings about “counting the days,” while Wayne raps about being in a hospital bed after one of the numerous epileptic seizures he’s had since childhood. (As for his health: Wayne tells me he’s feeling “amazing” these days.)

On “These Are the Days,” Kameron has a shrill prepubescent voice; Wayne says the song is from “2013 or 2014.” Nowadays, Kameron, Dwayne III, and Neal are all delving into the family business as rappers. “It’s innate. It’s not surprising at all,” Wayne says of his sons’ artistry. “I’m a true musician. So it would be shocking if they came up and said they wanted to do pottery.” He says he enjoys seeing them “from the start” of their craft; it reminds him of his own early years. “It’s impossible for you not to compare. I’ll say, ‘This what the fuck I was looking like when I would come in and niggas [would be] like, What you just said? ’ ” In 2006, Wayne and Birdman did a tandem album called Like Father, Like Son. Wayne says he’s open to a sequel with his sons. 

Wayne enjoys spending quality time with his four kids, going bowling and playing other sports — though his teenage sons are “getting to that age” where they don’t always want to do family outings. Wayne jokes that Neal, the youngest, is often “too cool” to join in on the athletics.

“Fuck no, I don’t care about no backlash for nothin’ I do. You know me, man.”

On a 2015 track, Wayne said his lifestyle was “S.A.S.A.R.A.F.”: “skate and smoke and rap and fuck.” While that is still the case to an extent, fatherhood takes precedence. “Now, it’s ‘Make sure you watch over those kids and make sure you’re there at those vital ages.’ That’s coming first now,” he affirms. “Make sure these niggas ain’t going to jail. Making sure nobody playin’ with my princess” — that would be 26-year-old daughter Reginae, an actress and social media influencer.

Reginae is Wayne’s oldest child, and she acts the part. She bounces onstage toward the end of his State Farm Arena set, chastising her brothers’ stoicness with an off-mic chiding: “What the fuck is wrong with y’all? Your daddy’s Lil Wayne!” She spends the rest of the set taking pictures of them and picking at their clothes and hair, the way older siblings do. 

Wayne says he focused on collaborations on Tha Carter VI. “If there’s one thing about this album that’s different, it’s me approaching it like, ‘Man, what would I sound like on something with such and such?’ ” Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus make appearances, but the most unexpected guest I hear is Italian opera star Andrea Bocelli, who sings “Ave Maria” on another track. Wyclef flew to Italy to ask Bocelli’s permission to sample the song, and ended up telling Bocelli the story of Wayne surviving a self-inflicted gunshot at 12. The tenor was so moved that he decided to sing the opera standard himself. “It’s one of them records that I feel is going to stop time,” Wyclef says. 

They play me the pensive track at Tree Sound, and as it concludes, Wayne stands with his hands out in front of him and his mouth in a firm circle, mimicking Bocelli’s elongated “oh” vocal run as if he was center stage at Teatro alla Scala. Twist, in front of him, claps like he’s sitting in the front row. 

Wyclef and Wayne recorded around 30 tracks for Carter VI. “Leaving Wyclef Jean and Lil Wayne in a studio for 24 hours is a dangerous thing,” Wyclef warns. “You don’t know what’s going to pop out.” Wayne adds, “You going to probably do like eight songs [with Wyclef] because he’s going to keep flipping what you did on one [song] and make a whole [new] song out of that shit.” The collaboration extended beyond the studio: Wyclef and Wayne created an informal group called the Gumbo that the Fugee likens to Gnarls Barkley; New Orleans musicians Jon Batiste, Ledisi, Trombone Shorty, and PJ Morton are members as well. 

Wyclef and Wayne also riffed on guitar during the sessions. Wayne has been playing for nearly two decades; he doesn’t know music theory, but plays by feel and often adds a solo to his features, as on Gelo’s recent “Tweaker” remix. While showing me one of his “too many” guitars at Tree Sound, he points out a left-handed Jimi Hendrix model; Hendrix is his favorite guitarist. “If you watch footage of that nigga play, if they don’t show the guitar, you’ll never know he’s playing a guitar. He’s so calm. He looks like Jayden Daniels or something,” says Wayne, referencing the Washington Commanders’ rookie sensation. 

After one Carter VI song, Wayne tells the room, “They coulda had some music,” mimicking guitar playing. “But instead they got rappin’.” He’s talking about the NFL. “They fucked up,” he says after another song. 

In 2023, Wayne told Rolling Stone he’d love to play this year’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show, since it was happening at New Orleans’ Superdome, his hometown stadium. But last September, the NFL announced Kendrick Lamar was getting the nod, and Wayne released a video revealing that not being selected “broke” him. 

Onlookers wondered whether NFL brass had told Wayne something to make him feel like he was poised to be the choice. Wayne says the league encouraged him to be more public facing in preparation for the show, making him feel like the selection was inevitable. “To perform, it’s a bunch of things they’re going to tell you to do and not do, asses to kiss and not kiss,” he explains, adding, “If you notice, I was a part of things I’ve never been a part of. Like [Michael] Rubin’s all-white parties. I’m doing shit with Tom Brady. That was all for that. You ain’t never seen me in them types of venues. I ain’t Drake. I ain’t out there smiling like that everywhere. I’m in the stu’, smokin’ and recording.” He says that after the Lamar announcement, someone at the NFL apologized and told him, “We ain’t in charge” of the Super Bowl halftime show.

“All of a sudden, according to them, they got curved. So, I’m going to have to just settle with whatever they say,” he resolves. Jay-Z, whom Wayne has called a “close friend,” runs Roc Nation, which oversees the halftime show. Last year, halftime-show producer Jesse Collins said Jay-Z has chosen the Super Bowl act since 2019. Wayne says he’s cool with his onetime collaborator, lauding him as someone with a wealth of advice who’s just a text away. (Neither the NFL nor Jay-Z responded to a request for comment for this story.)

Wayne tells me things are fine between him and Lamar; Wayne called the L.A. rapper ahead of the Super Bowl to clear the air and to encourage him. Earlier, on last year’s GNX album, Lamar had rhymed, “Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down.” A day later, Wayne made an X post warning, “I just be chillin & dey still kome 4 my head. Let’s not take kindness for weakness. Let this giant sleep.” Those lines spurred speculation that Wayne was set to insert himself into Drake’s beef against Lamar following the Super Bowl snub. 

Wayne seems to not quite remember the post when I bring it up. “I sound like I’m talking about the media, because I said ‘they,’ ” he says. In fact, Wayne says that he didn’t pay attention to Lamar and Drake’s war of words. “I’m going to give you the perfect example,” he tells me. “I went onstage and I was singing this song, and they thought I was dissing.” The song was “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s smash hit, DJ Mustard-produced takedown of Drake from last year. Wayne burrows his face into the arm of an accent chair while laughing about unknowingly rapping along to a Drake diss track. “I ain’t want my dude to be mad at me,” he says. “I didn’t even know it was Kendrick!” 

For most of the rap world, the Drake-Lamar beef was hot-button news. It didn’t make a blip for Wayne. While pointing to a nearby TV playing ESPN, he declares, “If it don’t happen on this channel or FS1, I wouldn’t know that happened.” 

As the album playback ends, Wayne transforms into the master of ceremonies, holding court about whatever comes to mind. The table I’m sitting at has a red tray with 10 tubes full of four or five blunts a piece; Wayne and Twist went through about two tubes so far. Throughout the night, Wayne periodically walks up to Lil Twist, and they switch blunts without a word spoken; I can’t discern the pattern despite trying all night. 

In between my questions, the conversation meanders freely amongst the room. Wayne is a natural comedian, bouncing all over. He talks skating with Lopez and gives his take on the latest Saw movie, opining, “The new one is good. That nigga [Jigsaw] still living. When is the cancer going to kill that nigga?” He loves watching the Discovery and History channels, and the self-described martian stays abreast of news on extraterrestrials  from “the Pentagon and the White House.” “They like to release shit right in the middle of something popping,” he theorizes, joking that Taylor Swift could drop an album and “NASA finally releases ‘Yo, we just killed three aliens.’ ” 

As a workaholic, Wayne misses a lot. Kameron spearheads a primer for Wayne on MrBeast. Wayne doubles over laughing when he learns that one of the YouTuber’s first viral videos was him counting to 100,000. Later in the evening, I reference Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne. 

“What’s that?” he asks, staring at another SportsCenter replay. 

“Kanye and Jay-Z’s album.”

“They did an album?”

The rest of the room spends the next five minutes playing songs from the iconic 2011 album to jog Wayne’s memory. He looks bewildered trying to decipher the opening moments of “Otis,” asking Twist if he ever freestyled to it (Twist shakes his head “no”), though he does recall “Ni**as in Paris” and “No Church in the Wild.” 

Wayne’s obliviousness pops up again when it comes to rapper Sexyy Red, who features on “Sticky” with him, GloRilla, and Tyler, the Creator. “[Tyler] was like, ‘I know you don’t know who that is.’ I was like, ‘I damn sure don’t. Red who? Sexyy what?’ ” he jokes. Tyler had to remind him that they were at a Balenciaga show together. But Sexyy imprinted herself in his memory with her bold verse: “I was like, ‘Oh shit, that’s dope.’ ”

“Sticky” was one of at least 17 features Wayne did in 2024, including “Wassam Baby,” with Rob49, and “Saturday Mornings,” with Cordae. Since his standout verse on Destiny’s Child’s 2004 “Soldier,” Wayne’s been known as a feature killer who’d collaborate with anybody. He professes that there’s never been a paying artist he’s turned down, even if he didn’t like the song. “I look at it as a challenge,” he says. “You going to have to be the reason why you like it. I’ll kill it and be like, ‘That shit wasn’t wack at all — I killed that bitch! Don’t play his verse. Just play mine.’ ”

AND AS QUICKLY as I was thrust into Wayne’s world, I find myself on the outside looking in. After our Tree Sound conversation, I still have questions to ask. I think our next interview is going to be the next day in Atlanta, but Wayne flies back to L.A. We schedule a Zoom follow-up for a late-January Friday at 9 p.m. ET. That evening, he pushes it back to the next night at the same time. And on Saturday, after waiting on Zoom for more than six hours — until 3:30 a.m. — I realize he’s never coming on. 

We schedule another Zoom for the following Tuesday, but it gets canceled an hour beforehand, one of his publicists apologetically citing “new personal developments that may cause delays.” After three cross-country trips, fleeing a wildfire, and numerous enervating waits, I feel the biggest story of my career slipping through my grasp for reasons I can’t discern. Wayne’s Rolling Stone cover had a set date for months, but without a second interview, the magazine postpones it. 

Maybe I should thank Lorne Michaels for reconnecting us. In February, Wayne is in New York to perform at the SNL50 special. The night before the show, I head to Penthouse Recording Studios at 2 a.m. for another late-night interview, to be held after Wayne finishes an SNL rehearsal. I chat with Wayne’s publicists and engineer-producer Manny Galvez into the wee hours while awaiting his arrival. Around 3:30, his team moves the meeting to the Park Hyatt. For three hours, I sit idly in the plush lobby, observing guests straggling in after a night of partying. After a certain point, I stop mentally prepping for the interview and focus solely on staying awake by walking around the pristine hotel. 

Finally, at 6:45, Marasciullo informs me Wayne is ready to talk. I head up to his suite and find Wayne in the kitchen area, kneeling against the kitchen island and rolling a blunt. He’s shirtless, wearing black sweats and the same black band around his neck he wore in Atlanta. On the island, I notice another tray containing about 20 tubes of blunts, a box of JUST water, and three lime-green bags of fruity candy. He had the same batch of party favors in all three of his studio sessions I’ve been to; martians must be creatures of habit. 

A smooth, trap-driven instrumental thumps from nearby speakers. Wayne says he spent his day working on a verse to another song, and has decided to write to a new beat to take his mind off it. The conversation, during the entirety of which he remains standing, starts with him talking from the other side of the suite. (In the six hours I spend with Wayne, I don’t see him sit down once.) As we build a rapport, he walks closer to me and Marasciullo, who’s sitting to my right. By the end of our conversation, he’s walking right up on me while demonstratively talking with his hands. 

Wayne says that he didn’t watch Lamar’s Super Bowl performance; he and Lil Twist played pool during the set, then went outside to smoke. “Every time I looked, it was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on,” he says. Wayne vows that he’ll no longer consider doing the Super Bowl: “They stole that feeling. I don’t want to do it. It was perfect.”

SportsCenter is on the TV, and Wayne periodically comments on highlights during our conversation while sipping coffee from a steel mug. As the co-founder of Young Money APAA Sports, representing clients across the athletic world, he has to stay in the know. In 2017, Wayne merged his Young Money agency with agent Adie von Gontard’s APAA Agency, and he’s pleasantly surprised by their success. “I ain’t even think it was going to last as long,” he says. “Now that it’s built the way it [has], it will never end. It’s absolutely amazing.” While casual fans believe Travis Hunter is his first client, he notes that he was the first NFL agent for top picks Quinnen Williams, Deandre Baker, and future Super Bowl LIX MVP Jalen Hurts — all three were selected within the first two rounds of their respective NFL drafts. 

Sports agents are often portrayed as smarmy overpromisers, but Wayne opts to be realistic with his clients. “The first thing we let them know is that no one is guaranteed. That’s not what you’re signing with Young Money Agency for, to make it to the league,” he states. “You’re signing over here [so] in case you don’t, you’re still up.” 

Around 2023, Hurts left the Young Money agency, and the rapper’s friend Skip Bayless speculated it had something to do with a photo Wayne took with President Trump in Florida in October 2020. Wayne says the -picture was taken spur-of-the-moment during a meeting purportedly about criminal-justice reform and other initiatives for the Black community. Wayne jokes that Trump was “an asshole” of a wisecracker who had him laughing the whole day. “Ain’t take nothing serious,” Wayne says. “Literally in there saying shit like, ‘What do we have to do again? Shit, I forgot.’ ” 

As Wayne tells it, former Trump adviser (and Trump’s son-in-law) Jared Kushner greeted him before the meeting and told him Trump wanted to pardon him on federal gun charges he’d soon face, after a December 2019 search of his jet uncovered a loaded gold-plated .45-caliber handgun. Wayne didn’t know who Kushner was before the meeting, but soon learned he was a fan who spearheaded the summit and pushed for the pardon. “He’s naming the exams that he crammed [to while listening to me], that I helped him,” Wayne recalls. “He was like, ‘I’m not about to watch my hero go to jail for this.’ ” Wayne would end up getting charged the next month, and faced up to 10 years in prison. But when Trump pardoned him in January 2021, it wiped away the charge. (Kushner didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.) 

Wayne recalls Trump “powwowing” with the rapper’s lawyer, Bradford Cohen, a former contestant on The Apprentice. Wayne does his best obnoxious white-guy voice as he mimics Trump and Cohen telling each other “Fuck you!” and Trump joking to him, “You got this motherfucker representing you? You’re going down!”

“There was some people in there like, ‘Y’all should take a picture.’ He didn’t even ask for a picture,” Wayne says. “[It’s] poppin’ in this bitch. And he has these nice little two things with him, too,” Wayne recalls, seemingly meaning two women. “[Trump] says, ‘These motherfuckers asking me for fucking pictures all fucking day, man. Can we please?’ ”

“I said, ‘It’s the president. OK,’ ” Wayne recalls with a smile. “[Trump] was like, ‘Thank you. Bitches [been] bothering me all day.’ ” 

There was widespread criticism of the photo across social media. Did Wayne care? “Fuck no, I don’t care about no backlash for nothin’ I do, you know me, man,” he says in a low croak. “My mama woulda been mad if I ain’t smile. That might have been the only backlash I would have worried about.” When I ask if he would’ve joined his rap peer Nelly in performing at the inauguration, he says, “I was asked, but we had something to do.” 

Trump got endorsements from several rappers last election cycle, but Wayne says he probably would have passed had he been asked. “I would’ve told him, ‘You probably don’t want that,’ because I don’t know what’s going on,” he admits, shrugging. “I can tell you who won the last game, but I can’t really … you know what I mean?” When I ask how he feels about the post-photo perception that he’s a Trump supporter, he notes, “I don’t feel about it. I don’t give a fuck about that type of shit. Tell ’em my dick big though.”

In 2006, Wayne released the protest anthem  “Georgia … Bush,” where he slammed then-President George Bush’s paltry post-Katrina response with fiery, system-appraising verses. His empathy is palpable in lines like “I know people that died in them schools/Now what is the survivor to do?” But he’s also said that his anger stemmed from a specific affront to his hometown; it didn’t radicalize him. At the end of a controversial 2016 ABC interview where he said he didn’t feel connected to the Black Lives Matter movement, he scoffed, “I ain’t no [bleeped] politician.” 

Wayne is similarly curt when I ask him about a recent Business Insider report that detailed how Wayne spent funds he received from the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which aided struggling venues, artists, and performing-arts businesses that lost revenue due to Covid quarantines. According to the report, Wayne spent the money on private planes, luxury clothing, and hotel trips for various women. Wayne looks genuinely perplexed when I bring it up. “I don’t know what that mean,” he says. Marasciullo quickly interjects, stating, “He ain’t got nothing to do with none of that shit. He don’t know nothing about that. It’s not the way his money comes and goes or none of that shit, but everything’s been audited and clean. It’s done and over. It’s just people fishing. If you’re not famous, they’re not talking about you.” 

Katherine Long, one of the reporters behind the story, shared a screenshot showing that when she texted Wayne asking if he “saw my email,” he replied, “Did u see my dick? I’m sure it’s much longer and better than the email and u like em long right Ms Long?” He doesn’t deny sending the text; in fact, he doubles down on it. “Any female that text me is going to probably receive a sexual comment. My phone is a personal phone, so if you even got my number, that means you went out your way and doing too much, and if you texted me and I send you something you don’t like, then suck my dick,” he says with an icy stare. “Just make sure you suck it right.” For better or worse, Wayne is adroit at dropping barbs that leave me speechless. As I’m preparing to leave, he gives me a firm handshake and apologizes for the delay. I’m not sure whether he’s talking about tonight or the entire monthslong interview process, but I appreciate it.

Lil Wayne can be hilarious, personable, and insightful when he wants to be. He can jump on the mic and hang with any rapper in the world when he wants. But he can also be coarsely crude when he wants. Wayne’s former manager, Cortez Bryant, once acknowledged that, after Wayne was out from Birdman’s wing, he felt he didn’t have to answer to anyone. And aside from his brief jail stint and the legal wrangling over Carter V, his entire world has been more or less up to his volition since then, with minimal consequences. Few of us would turn down that kind of freedom, but it’s worth wondering how many missteps we’d make with it. 

Hip-hop is our greatest cultural export, and Wayne might be its greatest story. Hip-hop opened its arms for a boy from Uptown New Orleans and shielded him while he developed his craft for virtually every day of his life. His voice, wit, penmanship, and work ethic made him worthy of the opportunity. He defied boundaries and set a standard so high that President Obama had to tell attendees of a 2008 Georgia town hall, “Maybe you are the next Lil Wayne, but probably not.” The insulation afforded by his celebrity allows him to thrill us and become the soundtrack for our greatest moments. But it’s also cushioned him from the gravity of his people’s plight and from consideration for how his comments can come off. And it’s happening amid a reckoning of what celebrity should mean to us. 

When I left Wayne in Atlanta, he was smoking near the studio console. He turned around and asked Marasciullo, “We goodie?” I dapped him, and he told his publicist, Trixie, and me “good night” as we exited Tree Sound. It was 8 a.m., broad daylight. Who knows what time Wayne thought it was. But regardless of the numbers on the clock, it was time for Wayne to get back to work.