02 LIL WAYNE THA CARTER III In his syrup-addled reveries, Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter babbles about being an alien life-form—the Afro-futurist orphan—but in fact, he was pop’s most quintessentially compelling 2008 human, rife with quixotic, flesh-based desires, flaws, and gifts. Rapping, Auto-Tune crooning, groping guitar strings, and rasping for air over a digital patchwork of beats and synths, he might’ve scored the year’s best record if he’d been more technically precise or thematically coherent. But then we wouldn’t have been as endlessly mesmerized—or implicated. C.A.

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WESC COAT, WESC.COM; LE JEAN DE JEANS, LEJEANDE.COM.