Words by Ime Ekpo
During Hip-Hop’s era of the 90s phenomenon, under the wing of Hip-Hop’s blastmaster, KRS-One, came New Jersey duo Channel Live. Channel Live is known for their quality lyrics of fury that is filled with dark elements, with a theme of sparking up the ganja. In 1995, Hakim Green and Tuffy created a classic song that hardcore Hip-Hop heads will forever rock the head to, “Mad Izm.”
This past Thursday (October 19th), Hakim Green shared a rather stirring comment on his Instagram page. The Hip-Hop veteran shared with his audience that he was the one who told Young Money rapper, Lil Wayne to name his champion album series, Tha Carter. The most interesting facet of this is, Hakim Green is an east coast veteran who reigned in the 90s, while Lil Wayne’s prime time as a solo artist came into to play at the end of the 90s into the early millennium, and plus, Wayne is from the south coast. How did these two even manage to cross paths? The Source decided to reach out to Hakim Green for details on the story that lead to the clever title of Lil Wayne’s, Tha Carter.
According to Green, in the year 2003 DJ Drama was in preparation for his mixtape, Gangsta Grillz. Drama wanted Lil Wayne to drop a verse for the mixtape, which caused Wayne a trip to the east coast.
Later in Lil Wayne’s hotel room, Green and Wayne were having a conversation about Wayne’s upcoming project and his stance as a rapper to the east coast. Lil Wayne was on a mission to gain respect from the east coast as an MC. Wayne expressed to the “Mad Izm” rapper that he was struggling to find a name for his upcoming project, his fourth studio album.
At that moment, an idea that Green had for JAY-Z, who was a megastar rapper at the time, started to make more sense for Wayne to consider. On top of that, it was very unlikely for him to ship this idea to Hov. Luckily, the idea was also a perfect fit for Wayne. Green suggested Wayne name his fourth studio album, Tha Carter, due to the fact he was signed to Cash Money Records, a record label founded by a pair of brothers, and being that in the movie New Jack City, Nino Brown and his brothers, Cash Money Brothers sold their narcotics out of the carter. Wayne thought the idea was perfect for his vision. Green nor Wayne foresaw the probable success of Tha Carter turning into an album series.
Hakim Green is not feeling shady at all about the success of Tha Carter, “I’m glad he ran with it and that i’m a part of history,” Green tells The Source. Wayne gave Green his props on Tha Carter with a shout out and penned thank you.
Tha Carter album series has reached its fourth release with Tha Carter IV in 2011, and ever since, its fifth release, Tha Carter V has been highly anticipated by Lil Wayne fans, which has been bombarded with uncertain release dates. Tha Carter V will be Wayne’s twelfth studio album and is reportedly Lil Wayne’s final album, due to his true coming into fatherhood.
