Lil Wayne’s ‘No Ceilings’ Mixtape Is Finally Releasing as a Vinyl LP
The Record Store Day Black Friday pressing is capped at 5,000 copies and adds “Kobe Bryant” as a bonus track.
Summary
Lil Wayne’s 2009 mixtape 'No Ceilings' is getting its first-ever vinyl pressing, arriving 17 years after the original tape first circulated
The Young Money release is pressed on burnt orange wax and limited to 5,000 copies for Record Store Day Black Friday
The physical edition marks a new chapter for a project whose borrowed beats made a full commercial release notoriously difficult to clear
Lil Wayne’s No Ceilings is making the jump to wax for the first time, with Young Money pressing the 2009 mixtape on burnt orange vinyl for Record Store Day Black Friday. Limited to 5,000 copies, the release gives one of the most celebrated tapes of Wayne’s prime a permanent physical form nearly two decades after fans first downloaded it.
The pressing is built squarely for collectors. Each LP is cut on burnt orange colored vinyl, and since every copy is pressed individually, the exact shade and swirl can shift slightly from record to record. Alongside the mixtape material, the edition includes “Kobe Bryant” as a bonus track, and the run tops out at 5,000 units with no indication of a repress.
The rarity makes sense given how No Ceilings was built. On the original 2009 tape, Wayne took well-known records by artists including JAY-Z, Beyoncé and Gucci Mane, kept their instrumentals and rewrote them entirely around his own verses. That freestyle-heavy approach cemented the project’s reputation in the mixtape era, but it also tangled the music in ownership questions once the industry shifted to streaming.
Those complications came to a head in 2020, when No Ceilings finally reached streaming platforms in a trimmed form. The original 21 tracks were cut down to 12, leaving several of the freestyles fans knew best on the cutting-room floor. Wayne’s manager Mack Maine has described the clearance process as a “frigging nightmare,” pointing to the costs and rights negotiations involved in bringing the rapper’s mixtape catalog to digital services.
Lil Wayne’s No Ceilings vinyl arrives Friday, November 27 for Record Store Day Black Friday at participating independent record stores, including Rough Trade, which is limiting orders to two copies per customer.
