Lil Wayne was born Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. He was born on Sept. 27, 1982, in New Orleans. Lil Wayne was raised in the crime stricken streets of Holly grove neighborhood of the city's 17th Ward.

Like the majority of children who grew up here Dwayne’s life as a child was far from golden spine storybook material. His affiliations with gangs led to violence and drug use. Dwayne stated in an interview “ We were too young, we had no idea what the drugs were. We didn’t know if it was dope, crack, coke or whatever.” At the age of twelve, Dwayne shot himself in the chest and almost bled to death, while playing with a loaded gun. After the police came to the scene, he claimed the unregistered gun belonged to Reginald "Rabbit" Carter his stepfather. This landed Rabbit a six-month stay in prison. Shortly after Rabbit came home he soon passed away. This left Lil Wayne fatherless for the second time in his life. Wayne now has a large tattoo of the words "Bang Bang" on his chest to commemorate his shooting and also has "Rabbit" tattooed on his arm, in honor of his beloved stepfather.

At the age of twelve, he connected with New Orleans hip-hop label Cash Money and appeared on local rapper B.G.'s 1995 debut True Story. Later, Lil Wayne played a key role in forming the Hot Boys along with B.G. and fellow rappers Juvenile and Young Turk. At the age of sixteen he released his debut solo album Tha Block Is Hot (#1 R&B/Hip-Hop, #3 pop, 1999).

Later albums Lights Out (#2 R&B/Hip-Hop, #16 pop, 2001) and 500 Degreez (#1 R&B/Hip-Hop, #6 pop, 2002) began to raise many eyebrows about the young rapper. But his biggest success came with Tha Carter (#2 R&B/Hip-Hop, #5 pop, 2004), which conceived the single "Go D.J." (#4 R&B/Hip-Hop, #14 pop, 2004). His release of Tha Carter II (#1 R&B/Hip-Hop, #2 pop, 2005) also hailed him steady attention. Along with came the hit single "Fireman" (#15 R&B/Hip-Hop, #32 pop, 2005) and later was deemed platinum from sales.