A Youngster’s Story Of Pain, Grace, Drive and Determination, The Beginning | Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne was born Dwayne Michael Carter Junior on September 27, 1982. He was raised in Holly Grove, an empoverished and crime ridden part of New Orleans, USA. His parents divorced when Wayne was 2 years old, but his abusive father forced Wayne and his mother to live at his mother’s until Wayne was five years old. Wayne said that his father left them there but wasn’t living there himself, but would occasionally drop by, beat his mum and go back to his “wife”.

When Wayne was 5 years old his mother and him left to go and stay alone. He was enrolled at Lafayette Elementary where he did well and was part of the Gifted Program. He showed great promise as a star student but he didn’t take long to find his passion for music and rap.

He wrote his first rap song at age 8. At the age of 9 years old, he had started participating in local rap battles, taking on boys twice his age, matching and surpassing their abilities. He dropped the “d” and started calling himself “Lil Wayne” and became popular and local block parties. Across town, Bryan “Baby” Williams a.k.a. Birdman and his brother Slim, were building an up and coming record label. “Cash Money records was the biggest record label in the city at the time…. They weren’t that “big” yet, but to us, they were big,” said Wayne’s childhood friend, Mack Maine.

About Wayne, Mack said, “To see somebody that small with so much confidence… He (Wayne) was killing it…”

After hearing about the 9 year old from one of the record label’s artists, Birdman set up a meeting with the 9 year old outside a local record store. That summer, in 1991, Wayne met Birdman who would eventually become his mentor and like “a father” to him. The Williams brothers became his surrogate family. Wayne rapped a rap called “Holly Grove” which is the neighbourhood where he was from. Birdman laughed and said “With some development, he could be something”.

Carter recorded freestyle raps on Williams’s answering machine.

Birdman eventually decided to include him in Cash Money-distributed songs. He also recorded his first ever collaboration album True Story with rapper B.G.. At the time, Carter was 11, and B.G. was 14, and was billed as “The B.G.’z”.

At the age of 12, Lil Wayne was already involved in a mirage of the activities on the New Orleans streets. On the afternoon of 11 November 1994, while his mother was at work, he snooped through her stuff and found a 9mm gun on her things. He started playing with the gun and accidentally pulled the tripper and the bullet ripped through his chest.

He crawled himself to the phone and managed to call 911. Four New Orleans police officers responded, including an off-duty officer known as “uncle John”. They started checking the apartments and when they got to Wayne’s apartment, all they could hear was loud music. They knocked, but the drowsy semi-conscious Wayne couldn’t shout back. There was no response to the knocks and Wayne, who could hear the knocking eventually couldn’t hear the knocks anymore and his mind said, “they just left”. This gave him a last bout of adrenaline and his mind told him to go to the dining room and he slid to the door on his own blood. Uncle John said, “We heard someone moaning inside saying they needed help. We knocked the door in and found Lil Wayne on the ground bleeding with a gunshot wound to the chest”. Uncle John held him like a baby and kept holding him on the way to the hospital as he was drifting in and out of consciousness. He was trying to keep him in conversation so that he would stay alive.

The bullet went straight in and straight out of his body, but missed his heart by less than an inch. Doctors battled to save his life and after several days on life support, Wayne eventually recovered. When he eventually returned to his 7th grade class, his brush with death became a badge of honour. “He got sympathy and he got the ‘bad boy’ image at the same time”. He continued as a start student in school and an up and coming rapper.

After his step father passed on, at just fourteen years old, Wayne dropped out of school to pour everything that he had into music. He wanted to help his mother. In 1997, Wayne joined with Juvenile, B.G., and Turk to form the Hot Boys, a boy band, within Cash Money Records. Hot Boys’ debut album Get It How U Live! was released the same year, followed in 1999 by the group’s major-label debut Guerrilla Warfare, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and No. 5 on the Billboard 200.

His mother started becoming lonely and he surprised her with the new that his high school girlfriend was pregnant when he was just 16 years old. He was surprised by his mother’s excitement at the news and the baby became additional inspiration. By age 17, he had made his first million dollars. He said that he gave his first huge cheque to his mother and she bought a house.

Disputes over money led to the Hot Boys’ break up and by age 20 Wayne found himself again needing to realign. Things got worse when his next solo album failed to meet expectations. Wayne is widely regarded as one of the hardest working MC’s in hip-hop business. Convinced that the process of writing was standing in the way of his creativity, he decided at the age of 21 that he was going to sing everything that he had ever written down and he emerged from recording with a 35 minute non-stop hit song called 10,000 bars. That was the last time he ever wrote anything down. “When I stopped writing, I noticed that everything was real now. I can’t speak about nothing but what’s real because I can’t write anything down”. Using his new freestyle approach, Wayne released The Carter in 2004, which put to rest any doubts about Wayne and the Cash Money Records, the label he had helped build.

Lil Wayne has sold over 110 million records worldwide, including more than 15 million albums and 37 million digital tracks in the United States, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. Lil Wayne also currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of his own label imprint, Young Money Entertainment.

Evan Carmichael put together, Lil Wayne’s top 10 rules for success below.

About The Author

Desmond Mapfumo is a Mindset Coach, Startup Builder and Consultant. He is the Founder and Contributing Editor For Inspiration Media Publications. Inspiration Media is member of the Rebirth Group, which he also founded and leads as the Chief Executive Officer.