Da Drought 3

Da Drought 3 is a classic mixtape, depending on who you speak to. It’s a double disc, with no original backing music. It features Juelz Santana, a pre-fame Nicki Minaj, the long-forgotten Brisco, and Curren$y. Out of 29 tracks, just 4 featured artists.

Wayne uses other artists canvases (Jay Z, Jeezy, Cam'ron, Gnarls Barkley, Kanye West) to lyrical black out, dropping some of his most dexterous and agile lyrical performances of his entire career. Pitchfork gave it 8.5/10, and Wayne spoke to MTV in 2007 about the tape:

Every song I done, I like it. Every song I done — you can ask my driver — I be writing away in the studio. The radio be on and whatever song comes on, add that instrumental to it… I just rap every day… Like I told you, I don’t say, “You know what? I’m dropping a double mixtape right now.” I start recording, [there’s so much material,] it’s like, “We gotta do two of these. Wow.” That’s what happened. It took about a month. I wanted to do every song I could. Then every time I go in [the studio], something new was coming out and I’d be like, “I gotta do that one too.” I think Mike Jones‘ [“Sky’s the Limit” freestyle] was the last one that come out.