What Happens to Hip Hop After the Carter 3 drops?

Many of you probably haven't even thought about it because over the past year, Lil Wayne has been in the public eye with his numerous mixtape releases. He doesn't even release the mixtapes directly, but mixtape DJ's have been latching onto his fame and success to release recycled Lil Wayne tapes. Weezy F. Baby has done a great job getting our attention for over a year now and we've pretty much taken for granted that he's one of the hottest, if not the hottest rapper out (no homo).

We noticed that Jim Jones last year was on a bunch of remixes, then kinda faded out gently with a slight increase in activity with the release of Harlem American Gangster. Jim was MUCH more visible in the past but has taken a back seat to regroup and come out again later. Kanye West was starting to make some noise and did the whole gimmicky 50 Cent Beef to fuel album sales, then after his album dropped he's kinda quiet. 50 Cent also did the same thing, kinda got quiet, but is back to building up for his G Unit album with all these mixtapes coming out on his website.

So The Carter 3 is coming out next month and we can only assume that Wayne is going to fall back for a little bit and make the public miss him. If he keeps dropping material AFTER Carter 3 immediately, there is really no value in the album.

This raises the question though, after C3 drops, who the hell is going to take over the rap game? My guess is 50 Cent, he's hungry again and knows how to work the mixtape scene in his favor. With T.I. on his recent collection of work, it's not out of the question to guess he might put out some mixtapes as well, but probably not at the level of Wayne to be at the center of attention. Could it be some previously unknown rapper to emerge as the next king of the mixtape scene?

Only time can tell.