Lil Wayne

Rapper, songwriter. Born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. on September 27, 1982, in New Orleans, Louisiana. One of today's most talented rappers, Lil Wayne has been creating rhymes since he was a child. He grew up in Hollygrove, one of New Orleans's poorest neighborhoods. At the age of eight, Wayne started rapping. He later met brothers Bryan and Slim Williams, the founders of Cash Money Records, who were impressed enough with his skills to give him one of their business cards. Ambitious, Wayne kept calling them until they took him under their wings and let him hang around the label's offices. Lil Wayne's first recording for Cash Money Records was True Stories (1993), performing with another skilled rapper B.G. under the name the BGs. Away from the studios, he was living dangerously. He sold crack for a time, and accidentally shot himself in the chest, according to an article in Rolling Stone. "It was my mom's gun" he told the magazine in 2008. "It was like a chopper hit me. But the bullet went straight through, and I bounced back in two weeks."

NAME: Lil Wayne OCCUPATION: Rapper BIRTH DATE: September 27, 1982 (Age: 29) EDUCATION: Lafayette Elementary School in New Orleans, Eleanor McMain Secondary School in New Orleans PLACE OF BIRTH: New Orleans, Louisiana more about Wayne Best Known For Complete with a bad-boy persona and multitudes of tattoos, canny rapper and producer Lil Wayne has found mega-success on the hip-hop and pop charts Born on September 27, 1982 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dwayne M. Carter, Jr. initially joined the teen rap group The Hot Boys as Lil Wayne before going solo. He parlayed mix tape buzz to multi-platinum sales for his studio album releases, and as such has had big radio hits like "A Milli" and "Lollipop," appeared on songs by Destiny's Child, Chris Brown and Erykah Badu, and won several Grammys.