Rest assured that the hubbub surrounding Lil Wayne’s return from prison will not die down quickly: There are, after all, surprise concert appearances and welcome home bacchanals and excitable Tweets to monitor. But we here at Vulture are by nature a forward-looking people, and therefore are already asking: Will Lil Wayne’s first post-prison album be any good? For insight, we look now to the past and the lessons learned from ten other albums released by artists after prison. The fine print: We only considered albums released after significant prison stints (so no rinky-dink overnight stuff: sorry Frank Sinatra, Tommy Lee, a million other people), and ones that disrupted careers, not preceded them (sorry Biggie, Merle Haggard, a million other people). Okay, here we go!
