By all accounts, it was an accident. He was playing with his stepfather's Taurus .44 when it went off, slamming a slug straight into his chest. The bullet missed his heart by two inches and sailed through his body, but it left the boy bleeding, barely breathing. He spent the next two weeks hooked to a hospital respirator.

Two inches.

If you'd survived a bullet to the chest, you'd probably call it a miracle—a sign, maybe, that God had something special planned for you. That it wasn't your time.

With that in mind, it's heartbreaking to listen to Lil Wayne rap. And talk.

"Ain't no such thing as before your time," Wayne tells Vibe. "What is your time? Who the f--- told you you had a time?"

Tha Story
In 2005—at age 22—Wayne (aka Weezy) proclaimed himself the "greatest rapper alive." These days, it's hard to argue. He croaks out raps with a stream-of-consciousness abandon, conjuring words and rhymes on the fly without ever taking pen to paper. It's said he sometimes creates four or five songs a night. His new album, Tha Carter III, sold 1 million copies its first week out—the first album to go platinum in its debut week in more than three years.

But as visionary and popular as he may be, the music—and the man—are unquestionably messed up. Vibe magazine calls Wayne a "slightly unhinged live wire with a taste for the dramatic and a boastful conviction that everything he does, or wants to do, is justified simply by who he is." The album is a freestyle genuflection to sex, drugs, violence and bling. Its creator smokes pot constantly, drinks cough syrup like most folks drink water and seems unconcerned that his own lifestyle may snuff him out.

It has all the makings of a Shakespearian tragedy—one that has its roots in the Big Easy.

Lil Wayne was born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. in 1982 in New Orleans' impoverished 17th Ward. That's the little boy who stares out from the cover of Tha Carter III—a wide-eyed child wearing his Sunday best, his innocence barely touched by the tattoos and jewelry added by the album's graphic artists.

But while the tattoos would come later, Wayne's upbringing marked his soul much earlier.

"I was raised in my room by myself with a television and a radio," Wayne told Vibe in 2007. His mother, Jacida Carter, was distracted, distant and—in Wayne's words—wild. "Fathers" rotated in and out of his life—three in 14 years. His third stepfather, Reginald "Rabbit" McDonald, was a successful landscaper who dealt drugs on the side. None of them quite knew what to make of Wayne, a bright kid who was enrolled in the gifted and talented program at New Orleans' Lafayette Academy.

"Momma was always like, 'That's my son's room over there,'" Wayne said. "'He crazy, he smart, we don't understand it.' I'd be in that b--ch doing all types of science. She wouldn't know, help, nothing."

But Wayne's focus faltered.

By the time Weezy was 11, he was selling drugs. He also was drawn to New Orleans' fledgling rap scene: He would hang out at block parties, talking up the playas. Eventually, he hooked up with Brian "Baby" Williams, owner of Cash Money Records, and he began peppering Baby's voice mail with impromptu freestyle raps.

That same year, Wayne signed with Cash Money. But the contract didn't last long: Mrs. Carter, disturbed by Baby Williams' troubling rap sheet (and not the musical kind), forced Wayne out of the contract and forbade the two from talking—shortly after that fateful day Wayne shot himself. But when Rabbit himself was gunned down in 1997, Wayne says his mom was in need of a new provider. So he re-signed with Cash Money at age 14.

The fledgling rapper quickly proceeded to drop out of school and father a baby—allegedly at the request of his mother—at 15. Two years later, Wayne unleashed his first solo effort, Tha Block Is Hot. The album—on which he refused to utter a single curse word—went double platinum.

Tha Story II
Weezy almost became a one-disc wonder. His follow-up albums flopped, and it wasn't until 2004's Tha Carter
that his musical star began to rise again. The album, named for both his last name and for the drug factory in the movie New Jack City, sold 1 million copies. Tha Carter II, released the following year, was another smash. Lil Wayne began releasing a bevy of mix tapes and appeared as a guest on dozens of singles. In 2007, an MTV poll found that he was considered the "Hottest MC in the Game." Earlier this year, Blender dubbed him "Best Rock Star Alive," and Rolling Stone named him "Best MC."

Suddenly, Weezy was everywhere—even though he hadn't released an official album for three years. Enter Tha Carter III, the album that many critics say cements Wayne's claim of being the greatest rapper alive.

Wayne's latest glories in gangsta in all its manifestations—the money, the women, the violence, the drugs. He brags that he earned every tattooed tear (typically a sign that a person has killed someone) on his face. "They say you're nobody 'til somebody kills you," he raps on "Playing With Fire," "But where I'm from, you're nobody 'til you kill somebody."

He's been arrested three times in three separate states in the last 12 months—twice for illicit drug and gun possession. The fact that he smokes pot is no secret: He seems, in fact, to toke up while recording one of the tracks on Tha Carter III.

Wayne is even more notorious for drinking high-octane cough syrup—a brew sometimes called "Texas tea." He lauds the stuff on the new album: "Promethazine and two cups. I'm screwed up, and ya ain't s--- if you ain't never been screwed up." And he turns up at magazine photo shoots with his trademark Styrofoam cup full of the stuff proudly in hand.

He tells the media his drug use isn't hurting him, even though the deaths of three other rappers have been connected to sipping syrup. And he has little patience for what anyone else thinks about him.

"Don't judge me," Wayne told MTV. "You wanna judge me, put on a black gown and get a gavel. Get in line with the rest of them that's about to judge me. I got court dates every other month. It's me against the world—that's how I feel."

Wayne's posse is equally reluctant to suggest their boy quit. "What he's doing ain't no different from you smoking a cigarette," says Baby Williams. "I don't think my son is doing no harm to what he wants to do and how he wants to live life."

Tha Story III
But life, it seems, is secondary to Wayne. In a culture that all but beatifies its fallen heroes (Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G.), the real brass ring is everlasting fame—the kind that often gets a jump-start through martyrdom. Listening to Weezy sing and talk, you sometimes get the sense that death is something to be embraced.

"I want be a Bob Marley," he tells Vibe. "I wanna be a Tupac—their lives mean so much when they gone. F--- right here."

Two inches.

The word Fear is tattooed on Wayne's right eyelid; the word God is on his left. If only they were tattooed on the inside of the eyelid instead, maybe he could see that he's meant for something better, something higher.

When Lil Wayne was 12, he shot himself.

He's 25 now, playing with different forms of firepower. He spins the cylinder with each gangsta rhyme, tugs on the trigger with each sip of syrup. It's a slow-motion game of Russian roulette with no happy ending in sight.

Two inches.

"Fear God."