My colleagues suggested that I listen to Lil Wayne’s new album “Tha Carter V.” I was very apprehensive about listening to the album because Lil Wayne is not the highest on my list of favorite music artists, but despite my apprehension, I decided to give it the good ol’ college try.

I turned to Spotify and the first song I listened to was “Mona Lisa,” featuring Kendrick Lamar. My first impression followed the lines of “it’s long, terrible and full of auto-tune, but it has a good beat.” Then I listened to the song again and really paid attention to the lyrics and realized this song is hilarious.

It’s a story about a woman who is cheating on her boyfriend with another man and is telling the other man all of her supposed boyfriend’s business. This “other” man is Lil Wayne, who only wants to get down and dirty with the woman, no strings attached, but on one particular day when he comes over to her home with those intentions, they get caught by her boyfriend, Kendrick Lamar.

The hilarious line that comes before this comical occurrence from Lil Wayne is, “I smoke purple I’m up here feeling like Celie,” and to paraphrase, he comments on his nappy dreads. If you know Celie from The Color Purple you know how nappy her head was. I find this funny for two reasons: number one, these lines have absolutely nothing to do with the story, and two, the comparison of his hair to Celie’s is a knee-slapper.

Besides that, Lil Wayne is rapping about how a woman is untrustworthy, and her boyfriend, who tries to be faithful, ends up on the wrong end of the barrel. Lil Wayne raps, “Treat her halo like a frisbee,” which ultimately means that this woman acts like she is faithful and good, but he knows that’s not the case so he takes her act for exactly what it is, an act.

Once the song builds up to the caught-in-the-act cheating charade, Kendrick Lamar introduces the Mona Lisa fake smile idea. This verse of the song reminded me of the “Trapped in the Closet” series with R. Kelly in it because Lamar finds his girlfriend and Lil Wayne together and he is threatening them with a gun.

Then, Lamar makes this crying voice while he’s rapping which kind of works because it adds something extra to the already amazing beat. The funniest part is when he says how he did all these things for her, then she gets a call from another man and has a special ringtone for him, and that just sends Lamar over the edge and he kills himself. The shot at the end drops the beat for Lil Wayne’s and Lamar’s outro, which absolutely horrid in sound but very deep in meaning. Lil Wayne got what he wanted, and the girl was pushed to the side like she pushed Lamar to the side.

I listened to other songs on the album, and I feel if Lil Wayne’s auto-tuned voice and tired, degrading lyrics were deleted from every track, it would be a top-notch album full of amazing beats. The songs in themselves aren’t bad, but Lil Wayne’s voice just sounds like a chainsaw to a maple tree. Overall, if you can listen to the lyrics and the beat and look past the agonizing sound of his voice, it’s a great album.