Tha Carter 3/4 are NOT part of the Carter series...

[FreeSpeech]

...or shouldn't be.

I don't see anyone bring this up anywhere, but the Carter series are supposed to be loose concept albums. "Tha Carter" is Wayne's mansion, the albums are supposed to be him bringing you through the building. It symbolizes basically how he built the himself (the house) from the ground up and he's bringing the listener through to show them everything he's done. It's not some deep concept album, but it's still a format. It's also supposed to be about the neighborhood his house is in/where he grew up, as shown by all the On The Block skits on the first 2 Carters.

C3 and C4 make no mention of the house, that's the whole POINT of calling the albums Carter, it's his house. I really don't know how that point of information has been lost on him

[KillahBee]

I can see where you're coming from man, but I'm not so sure

C3, for me, does continue that template you suggested: It's the album that marked Wayne's stamp on music, not just hip hop, but in gerenal, it made Wayne a superstar, and Wayne's performance on their alludes to that....Although I feel it's probably the worst of the series, I think C3 is Wayne at his most creative, it blends Wayne's weirdness, lack of "staying on topic" style, and mic skills unlike anything he's released before or after, I mean Lollipop and Shoot Me Down, Phone Home and Tie My Hands, on the same album? That album was mess, (not saying that's a good or bad thing) but that's where he was at when he released it, it's like he said, "fuck it, I had a perfect album on my hands before you fuckers leaked it, so I'm gonna start over, do whatever the hell I want on it, and it'll still smash a million in the first week"

Lets say C1 is Wayne building the foundation, C2 is Wayne establishing himself, and C3 is him realising he's got to here he wanted to be: The biggest figure in hip hop (maybe even any genre) at that time

C4? I'll need to listen to it more to see where it fits in, but he did bring back the Intro/Interlude/Outro format from the first two Carter's, so it should fit in somewhere with the series

[SliK]

Carter IV should be a mixtape, and it wouldnt even be his best mixtape, it's garbage.

[RaidsTheThrone]

3 is as Carter as were ever gonna get ...

He choulda called C4 anything else... it fits no series