Can Lil Wayne save hip-hop?

Wayne's singularity makes "Tha Carter III's" inconsistencies easier to overlook. When it comes to subject matter, the album hardly paints Wayne as an innovator. Firearms, women of ill repute, illegal substances and his own awesomeness -- these are Wayne's obsessions, just like those of hundreds of other rappers. He's that rarest of inadvertent hip-hop messiahs in 2008, a commercially minded artist who gets by on tons of idiosyncratic panache, a writer filtering shameless pulp clichés through his out-there worldview. And so even though he lazily swipes moves from R&B singers in order to make a buck, "Tha Carter III" also finds Wayne playing the giggling tough guy in lyrics that suggest fairy tale characters cast in a straight-to-video gang picture ("He's a beast/ He's a dog/ He's a motherfucking problem/ OK, you're a goon/ But what's a goon to a goblin?"). Or he issues baroque boasts where you can almost see him grinning as he takes things one step beyond his peers in proclaiming his own greatness ("I ain't kinda hot/ I'm the sauna/ I sweat money/ And the bank is my shower ... and that pistol is my towel").

Even as Wayne wallows in money-cash-hos content, he bends language to shame the cookie-cutter contemporaries that he'll still bless with a guest appearance for a price. In the last four years Wayne has lent his bankable voice to dozens of artists, from world-conquering divas like Destiny's Child to here-today-gone-tomorrow rappers like Playaz Circle. That's how he has been making his rent, so instead of bothering to release solo albums (or even solo singles), Wayne has vented his chemically enhanced energy into endless mix tapes, the quasi-legal promotional CDs that rappers release through the Internet and mom-and-pop shops. He has released at least six or seven in the past two years alone, each stuffed with between 20 and 30 tracks. The mix tape route offered little in the way of remuneration, merely the chance to flex his skills in a way that put the fear of God into other rappers.

Released on the cheap and packed enough to make them a good value even if you hated half the songs, mix tapes were the perfect format for an inconsistent obsessive like Wayne. They turned him into a critics' phenomenon. As his press clippings piled up over the last 24 months, his succès d'estime began to feel like a blog-era punch line: a "pop" musician who actually got listeners excited, except that you'd never be able to find his best work in Best Buy. In May of this year, however, all of this critical hubbub finally met the real world as "Lollipop," the debut single from "Tha Carter III," hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Catchy in the worst sort of way, it sounded little like Wayne's mix tape tracks -- and more like R&B chart colossus T-Pain got his hands on a duck call and decided to dial a phone sex line.

"Tha Carter III" comes padded with enough "Lollipop"-style crossover singles to cement Wayne's recent return to the spotlight. He sleepwalks through "Mrs. Officer" to let guest crooner Bobby Valentino try out the ickiest come-on of the year so far: "When I get up all in ya/ We can hear the angels calling us." Tracks like "A Milli" and "Phone Home" burn with the energy and oddness Wayne fans now demand thanks to their hero's mix tape work rate and inexhaustible store of silly self-descriptions. But boasting that you're a "venereal disease," a "goblin" and "rare, like Mr. Clean with hair" doesn't make sitting through a drippy love rap like the Babyface-assisted, Beyoncé-quoting "Comfortable" any easier. Even when Wayne attempts to get incisive about the state of post-Katrina New Orleans on "Tie My Hands," he turns the chorus over to gloopy blue-eyed soulman Robin Thicke.

Both "Comfortable" and "Tie My Hands" were produced by Kanye West, and it's probably not coincidental that wigged-out Wayne exhibits an unfortunately West-ian maudlin streak on these tracks. And Wayne's stab at a Kanye-style concept song, "Dr. Carter," where he plays a physician attempting to "heal" wack M.C.s, finds him rapping more nimbly than he ever has before. But the "choruses," which are actually little skits in which a nurse updates us as to the patient's progress, murder the song's momentum stone dead.

And yet at least half of the album thrills, because when it comes to talking smack about his peers, Lil Wayne remains in a league of his own. "I can get your brains/ For a bargain/ Like I bought them/ From Target/ Hip-hop/ Is my supermarket/ Shopping cart full/ Of fake hip-hop artists," he spits on "Phone Home," before he chops his flow into even shorter, harder angles, beginning with the aforementioned "we are not the same, I am an alien" line. He pronounces it halfway like "Elián" so he can finish up with "like Gonzalez/ Young college/ Student/ Who didn't/ Just flip the game/ Like Houston/ I'm used to/ Promethazine/ In two cups/ I'm screwed up."

Even the weaker songs are strewn with breathless moments like these, where you're forced to rewind a track because your brain isn't moving quite as quickly as Wayne's. And when Wayne the rapper drops the ball, his producers are usually there to cover his fumbles. Musically, "Tha Carter III" will probably end up the most accomplished and purely enjoyable hip-hop album of the year, from David Banner's sinister carnival Muzak on "Phone Home" and "La La" to Kanye's spare Roots-esque retro-soul on "Tie My Hands" to Bangladesh's maddening robotic minimalism on "A Milli."

Hip-hop lifers may be looking to Wayne to pull the genre out of its funk, but he's more an inspired one-off than someone to spark a rap renaissance. His eccentric style truly has earned him all those critical props and, now, the kind of sales that surprise a battered industry. But new listeners may not want to spend their time cherry-picking their way through an erratic album like "Tha Carter III," let alone Wayne's massive, unruly catalog as a whole. Even more than a rapper for the era of mix tapes, Wayne is a rapper for an era where iTunes' "move files to trash" function lets you easily edit out the flops from a musician's catalog and string together your faves. The best Lil Wayne collection will probably be the playlist you put together yourself after the guy finally retires, provided you can schedule a week off from work for the sorting process.