WHO IS LIL WAYNE

Founder and CEO of Young Money, Dwayne Michael Carter, was born on September 27, 1982 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

He was raised in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans, called Hollygrove. There, he studied in Lafayette Elementary School, and was a topdog student at Eleanor McCain Secondary School.

He met Birdman (owner of Cash Money Records) in 1991, whom he would later convince to let him work for the label by recording freestyle raps on the label owner’s answering machine.

He was soon partnered with BG to be a duo, before they both became a group called, “Hot Boys”, with Juvenile and Turk in 1997. Weezy debuted as a solo artist with “Tha Block is Hot” in ‘99. It gained platinum certification from the RIAA and got him a nomination for Source Magazine’s Best New Artist award.

The next two albums he released weren’t as successful but were nonetheless certified gold. He followed with a truckload of mixtapes instead of studio albums for publicity. Da Drought 3 was one of the mixtapes that put him back in the limelight, and was even considered to be “among the best albums of 2007” by the Rolling Stone.

Weezy also featured in several singles that charted atop the Billboard Hot 100. Since 2004, he has released ten more studio albums as well as appeared in films and television shows.

He has won all BMI award nominations but one, a total of five out of 24 Grammy award nominations, and is deemed to be “one of the most influential hip-hop artists of his generation”.