In late 2014, Nylon sent me to Miami to write a cover story on Lil Wayne. The original idea was to have me interview him in LA, but he canceled about three times, and decided that he was temporarily finished with the West Coast. He wasn’t leaving Miami anytime soon, so Miami it was. I packed every pink shirt I own (one), the magazine booked me two nights in a modestly priced South Beach hotel, and I was instructed that at any point in that 48 hour window, I should be ready to talk to Wayne.

I’d already interviewed him earlier that summer for XXL, so I had a vague idea what to expect. When you’ve been famous that long, there aren’t any questions that you haven’t been asked. He’ll talk to you about the Packers running game for 20 minutes, but rightfully lacks the desire to discuss “the process.” I didn’t exactly expect him to divulge the darkest secrets of his psyche or what exactly Birdman did to stop Carter 5 from seeing the light of day. On some level, this is a man who has been famous for nearly 20 years, since he was old enough to drive a car; he’s all too aware of the potential repercussions of telling the entire truth. But if you show the requisite amount of knowledge and respect, he can be as real as reasonably expected.

This interview came before the lawsuits against Cash Money, the Barter 6 beef with Young Thug, the second wave of seizures. If you’re interested in what Lil Wayne’s mansion looks like, the original article is still online. It’s a 15,000 square foot, $11 million lunar shrine inside a gated community on La Gorce Island. A security guard grilled me as soon as I stepped out the Uber and made me call the publicist just to assure him that I wasn’t some crazed super fan under the delusion that Wayne had been sending me secret messages through “”Tha Mobb.”

The interior was covered in plaques, photos, memorabilia, and Lil Wayne as the Nevermind baby. Basquiat paintings and Andy Warhol “Marilyn” silk screens. A baby grand piano underneath 50-foot ceilings. Guitars art and mythology books, a telescope, framed photos of Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Bob Marley, Wayne’s children, and pin-up girl collages.

When I arrived at 10 p.m., Wayne was still asleep. When he woke up, he told his reps that he had a headache so we didn’t even start talking until about midnight — when I was summoned to enter his skate rat man cave in another wing of the house. His personal chef cooked him spaghetti and meatballs and canned corn, while we watched the Trail Blazers beat Houston. He smoked four blunts and didn’t pass it once. When I told my mom a few days later, she was appalled.

The lack of weed etiquette was expected. Wayne was legitimately on another planet. For one, I’ve never seen anyone that exhausted. He was in a complete fugue state for the first half hour, as though he had no idea about the day, month, or decade. The only thing that excited him was the prospect of skating with a bunch of teenagers at a high school that night from 4 to 6 a.m. Talking to Wayne was like talking to an ancient alien. It seemed like he had just woken up from a 300 year nap, only to discover that he’d become the most influential person since Ben Franklin (what the F in Weezy F. Baby stands for). He clearly understood his importance and the sacrifices it took to get here, but seemed distressed that no one would ever really understand him. He might be right.

It’s unsurprising that he wants to retire now because he wanted to retire then. Of course, it’ll be shocking if he retires, because no one actually retires. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carter V comes out this week.

As for his impact and legacy, you don’t need me to explain. You can read the tweets from Young Thug, Chance or Flying Lotus or talk to anyone from the ages of 18 to 34. I’m running this interview in full because it seems to conveys his sense of fatigue and creative future. There are random asides about the Hot Boys and “Georgia Bush.” In the interests of preserving his reputation, I left out the part of the transcript where he endorses Byron Scott. He’s earned it.