Off the charts: Rapper Lil Wayne headlines "KUBE 93 Summer Jam"

We are not the same: I am a Martian.

— Lil Wayne, aka Dwayne Michael Carter, aka Weezy F. Baby

The alien is black and has dreadlocks and raps like a beast. He'll headline "KUBE 93's Summer Jam" Sunday in Auburn at White River Amphitheatre.

The 25-year-old New Orleans hip-hop star Lil Wayne declares himself a Martian on the track "Phone Home," off his excellent and bizarre 2008 album, "Tha Carter III."

He says the Martian line almost as much as his favorite phrase: "I am the best rapper alive."

Even in these download days, within one week of its June 10 release, "III" went platinum (1 million copies sold, with millions downloaded for free).

For the dying record industry — whose stars these days are more singles-selling products, especially in the devastated hip-hop mainstream — those the sales are as unbelievable as Weezy's Martian claim.

The sales are real, but Wayne is making a metaphor. When he talks about Mars, he's talking about his art, rapping, and how he's an alien to today's hip-hop world. That's certainly true.

More than hit singles, "Tha Carter III" is an actual album with many song styles unified by one fantastic personality — and it is as chock-full of metaphors, magic, similes and silliness as it is nasty sex and drug use. It's steeped in the latter: implicit, explicit and audibly occurring-during-recording drug use. Cough syrup with promethazine and codeine — a heavy sedative and narcotic — is Weezy's drink of choice; he routinely smokes emptied-out cigar "blunts" filled with marijuana.

"III" is partially street songs for the 'hood and 'burbs, and if you know its ubiquitous sex-and-drugs hit "Lollipop," you know it's a hip-pop album. But it's been given the academic treatment by famous critics such as Robert Christgau (for National Public Radio). Ace Village Voice blogger Tom Breihan broke down the album track by track before it came out, with three days' entries as focused as torah study. Wayne gets the treatment because he's a great rapper, and because music writers get excited when talented people cut loose and swing for the fences. That's what his awesome style is about these days: reckless abandon.

Lil Wayne used to be a kid rapper and was barely a teenager when he started making hip-hop hits with obscenely consumerist hometown crew Cash Money Records in the late '90s. His high, froggy voice was annoying and so was his rap personality. In this era, Wayne coined "bling bling," now common parlance.

Post-millennium, he switched up his whole flow, actually rapping well for a change and bringing real depth to the first two "Carter" albums in '04 and '06. He spent the next two years releasing "mixtapes" — DJ-helmed album-length hip-hop sides with stolen beats and bad sound quality — for free on the Internet at an alarming rate, hundreds of songs last year and the year before.

All of a sudden, Wayne was a rapper who cared to be as good as the best in the game — Jay-Z and Andre 3000 from Outkast — and had learned to freestyle (saying rhymes without writing rhymes), unconsciously connecting audacious words and ideas on the fly on BET show "Rap City" and all over YouTube. He had a new voice, a lower-pitched croak that could stretch slow or go double-time, and a new penchant for wordplay and entendre, heightened by pronunciation play (talking about Martian aliens, he raps "Elian, like Gonzalez" on "Phone Home"). Stylistically, the metamorphosis was dramatic, and lots of people who used to hate him came around to what was essentially a new rapper.

Sacrificing album sales for Internet buzz, his mixtape gambit paid off, landing him guest-rapper money on tons of other artists' singles, cultivating all kids of media buzz and, most of all, reintroducing him as "The Best Rapper Alive," a workaholic Martian. "Tha Carter III" is his victory lap, and today's "Summer Jam" in Auburn is a stop on that tour.

Now at the top of his career commercially and artistically, his whole image rests on his singularity. These days, the hustler and open gang member is more concerned with flying his freak flag than his thug rag. From "A Milli," the minimalist and best track on "III," a third-person description:

"He's a beast, he's a dog, he's a mutha — in' problem / OK you're a goon, but what's a goon to a goblin?"

The demented, raspy twist he gives "goblin" is almost better than the fact he makes "man raps possessed over repetitive, hypnotic banger" front-page news: Weezy's the most popular artist out at precisely the time he's decided to buck the biggest hip-hop trend, the impression of gangsterness, and fall headfirst into raw, druggie expressions.

It's gone on for a while, and by now, he's so drugged-out, he's almost Lil Winehouse. Wayne's not an alien, but he's trying to leave Earth. And as for whether he's the best rapper alive? No. His idols Jay-Z and Andre 3000 are both better. But he's roughly a decade younger and already a contender.

Will he show up at "Summer Jam"? Probably. Will he go on stage late? Probably. Will he be alive to look back at the insane career he's built for himself? I don't know.

To quote a famous Andre 3000 lyric, "Spaceships don't come equipped with rearview mirrors."

Andrew Matson: 206-464-2153 or amatson@seattletimes.com