Lil Wayne named the Carter series after himself — after Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., the New Orleans kid who joined Cash Money Records at age eleven and spent the next two decades building a discography that doubles as a working chronicle of what hip-hop did between 2004 and 2024. Six albums. Twenty years. The “20 Years of Carter Classics” tour brings that full run to Frost Bank Center on Saturday, October 17.
About the Show
The tour puts all six Carter albums in front of arena crowds. The 2004 debut was produced largely by Cash Money in-house beatmaker Mannie Fresh, opened inside the Billboard 200’s top five, and went double platinum. A Grammy.com retrospective published in June 2025 framed it as Wayne’s bid to revitalize a label that had fallen into decline; Tha Carter II (2005) followed and established, per the same piece, his “larger-than-life star persona,” with singles including “Fireman” and “Best Rapper Alive.”
The commercial peak came with Tha Carter III (2008): over one million copies sold in the first week, the No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 single “Lollipop,” and three of Wayne’s five Grammy Awards, a record the retrospective called “one of rap’s greatest victory laps.” Tha Carter IV arrived in 2011, after an eight-month incarceration at Rikers Island. Tha Carter V followed in 2018 after a seven-year gap shaped by legal battles, a label dispute, and health issues; it featured Kendrick Lamar on “Mona Lisa.” Tha Carter VI, released June 2024, brought in Bono, Andrea Bocelli, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The retrospective frames the full arc as documenting hip-hop’s “production evolution from futuristic trap muzik in the early 2000s to bombastic beats in the 2010s to the moodier production of contemporary hip-hop.”
Multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning rapper 2 Chainz joins as support for the San Antonio date. The tour runs from June 30 in Bangor, Maine through October 23 in Knoxville. Wayne, per the Live Nation press release, became the first male artist to surpass Elvis Presley with the most entries on the Billboard Hot 100.
Venue & Logistics
Frost Bank Center hosts this show in San Antonio. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; showtime is 8:30 p.m. The venue is cashless: credit, debit, and tap-to-pay only. Bag policy: 12″ x 12″ x 6″ or smaller.
Tickets
Early buyers can access a 2-for-$75 offer using code DayOnes while supplies last. Buy tickets