Lil Wayne began his career as a near novelty, a preteen delivering hardcore Southern hip-hop. Through years of maturation and prolific output, during which the delivery of his humorous and wordplay-heavy rhymes gradually changed from ringing and pugnacious to stoned and rasped, he developed into a million-unit-selling artist with a massive body of work, one so inventive and cunning that it makes his claim of being the "best rapper alive" worth considering. Wayne debuted at the age of 12, received his first platinum certification five years later as a member of the Hot Boys, and immediately thereafter became a formidable solo artist with Tha Block Is Hot (1999), his first of 12 Top Ten albums on the Billboard 200. During a period of constant output, entailing not just successful full-lengths but also reputation-building mixtapes and featured appearances on pop hits like Destiny's Child's "Soldier" (2004), he reached mainstream superstar status with Tha Carter III (2008). A triple-platinum blockbuster, it spawned the number one pop hit "Lollipop" and the number six follow-up "A Milli," and netted three Grammy awards, including Best Rap Album. Throughout the 2010s, despite numerous legal and creative battles, Wayne continued to be a regular presence on the upper reaches of the charts with albums such as Tha Carter IV (2011) and I Am Not a Human Being II (2013), additional smash singles as a headliner, and a continually lengthening list of collaborative hits, including the multi-platinum "Sucker for Pain" (for the Suicide Squad soundtrack in 2016) and "I'm the One" (headlined by DJ Khaled in 2017). Since the latter hit, Wayne has topped the Billboard 200 with the consecutive LPs Tha Carter V (2018) and Funeral (2020) and has continued to issue non-album singles and mixtapes, like his 2021 Rich the Kid collaboration Trust Fund Babies, 2023's Tha Fix Before Tha VI, and the DMX-assisted 2023 single "Kant Nobody."