I pulled into the Valero on North Lamar this weekend and the other two cars filling up were both playing Tha Carter III. One driver – a guy in his forties wearing Dockers and a button-down – waited by the pump to “Mrs. Officer”, while the other - my age in a raised black truck - blasted “A Milli.” I was listening to “La La.”

It’s one thing to know that an album sold a million copies in its first week – it’s something else to hear it. And that one instance was icing on a long week of “A Milli” in West Campus and “Mr. Carter” on 6th, not to mention the long spring of “Lollipop” everywhere. There are songs you hear with this sort of inescapability – “Hustlin’”, “We Takin’ Over”, “Ridin’ Dirty.” But for an album to do it is rare, unless you’re Jay-Z or Kanye West. Or, now, Lil’ Wayne.

Kanye and Jay-Z are more successful than any other modern rappers largely because of the high expectations that surround their work. I really don’t think much of the guy as a rapper, but I blindly purchase every album Kanye puts out because I expect it to be well-executed, catchy but still substantial, diverse (in terms of content), and dynamic.

Tha Carter III establishes Wayne as the third member of this elite club. Two years ago, he was already well lauded as the greatest rapper alive, and Tha Carter II was certainly not a commercial or critical failure. But the diversity of content wasn’t there – the highs and lows of II were nothing compared to its successor, and to an untrained ear, it was another southern rap album. And it was – the best southern rap album in many years.

Tha Carter III is painted all over with undeniably southern flourishes, and there are four beats that fall within the boundaries of what you would hear on any street CD in Atlanta or Houston. But compared to Wayne’s past works and his last ten years as a benchmark of the Dirty South, III is largely region-less. It’s his first album that doesn’t ever recall the bouncy Cash Money hits that brought him into the game. Not coincidentally, Wayne’s father-figure Baby never appears, though he still executive-produces. The cord has been cut, at least for image-sake, and baby Wayne’s wide-eyes on the cover intimate that this may be be intentional.

Like Kanye and Jay-Z, Wayne panders to all varieties of hip-hop fans and non-fans with Tha Carter III. Three songs smack conspicuously of the New York sound, aided by collaborators like Jay-Z, Juelz Santana, and Fabolous. “Shoot Me Down” sounds like Linkin Park. Two songs recall old school De La Soul - the Swizz Beatz-produced “Dr. Carter,” an instructional on dealing with wack rappers, and “Mrs. Officer,” a spirited, jesting story of a tryst with a cop. “Got Money” and “Lollipop” are humongous radio jams (in case you haven’t heard). The Kanye co-authored “Let The Beat Build” seems destined for the blogs, and Starbucks will probably soon be playing “Tie My Hands,” the smoky post-Katrina duet with Robin Thicke. At gas stations across America, drivers are realizing that everyone else is hearing something different in Wayne and his new album.

That’s the goal. It’s what Kanye and Jay-Z do: they make smart, quality songs for more constituencies than other rappers. Or, perhaps, their music is soaked up by a broader set of consumers than, say, people who buy Yung Joc's records. Either way, a region or a sub-genre’s fan base does not buy 5 million albums. A nation does.

But is this behavior wrong of an artist? Because Wayne started as an outsider and had to work his way into the non-southern markets (as opposed to his two peers), does that justify altering his sound to sell more records? Or am I assuming too much about his intentions?

All shoes fit Lil’ Wayne, so to speak, and he seems to have created Tha Carter III on his own terms – on only one song does he sound at all out of his element (ironically, it’s titled “Comfortable”). The music on the whole is superb, despite being scatterbrained. However, all the jumps in sound leave it lacking a consistent pulse or tone. Wayne’s seems to have made his last album with a certain timbre in mind, and he achieved it. I know the latter isn’t true for III, and the former doesn’t seem to be either.

For the past two years or so, my buddy Martin and I have been going back and forth in a very unoriginal exercise that involves sending links to the most recent Wayne tracks/leaks/freestyles and geeking out. Until recently, the usual focal point was “is this what III will sound like?” because every leak or new set of tracks had a different vibe. Da Drought 3 was ebullient and dexterous, and Wayne’s drug-use was unavoidable on “Prostitute.” In between them, our favorite track, “1000 Degrees,” was masterful and determined, like the best songs on Carter II.

When Martin snatched up the leak of III a couple weeks ago, his response was just, understandably, “this is weird.” After years of hearing the kitchen sink, the presumption was always that Wayne would narrow it down to one of his many sounds for this album. Instead, we got the kitchen sink, just much better mastered.

To answer an earlier question, I think I do assume too much about Wayne’s intentions. It seems you can never count money out of such creative decisions, but I think the dominant reason why the album sounds scattered is because Wayne spent the last couple of years taking on every beat under the sun. Creatively, the time in which this album was recorded has been the most packed and chaotic of Wayne’s career. Hence, the songs we hear on III.

So, ethical issues aside, what makes this album potentially unfulfilling is exactly what makes it great: Wayne’s virtuosic lyricism. He does not possess (or chooses to ignore) the ability - that Jay and Kanye evince – to stick to themes in songs. He tumbles through verses, usually riding on free-association. Even his most vivid and intentional verse, from “Play With Fire,” is still remarkably muddled: “Forced into evil / it’s all in your head / It’s all so cerebral / Call me Knievel / You follow and I lead you / Straight to the needles / The bottles, the battles / The beetles that eat you.”

There are songs on Tha Carter III that have a clear beginning, middle, and end, but they are rare. Carter II didn’t have many either, but it worked because the sound of the album and Wayne’s more consistent frame of mind were all the continuity you needed. If Wayne locked himself away for a few weeks and tried all this genre jumping, or if he recorded on random occasions over a long period of time but kept to the same producers or themes, III would be a more overall potent piece. Chaos is necessary to his brand of genius, but III proves that order is necessary at some point in the process.

Still, as his mixtapes also prove, Wayne doesn’t need to do much to best every other rapper and Tha Carter III is surely one of the strongest albums of 2008. Producer Bangladesh, who provided the monster “A Milli” beat, vocalized his discontent about Wayne’s treatment of his song. Bangladesh thought it deserved a chorus and a more traditional structure, and maybe it did. But Wayne just raps on it for four minutes and struts on to the next song.

“A Milli,” of course, is already one of the biggest rap tracks of the summer and is currently in the Top 40. A song with one rapper going for 3:42 straight and no chorus. With “Dear Summer,” Jay-Z only did 2:53.