Hipsters, thugs, and assorted hangers on all crammed into L.A.’s Silent Movie Theater last night for a private screening of The Carter, the Lil’ Wayne documentary that’s had the Internet goin’ nuts for months – first because Wayne yanked his support from it, and next because there’s a dope trailer floating around that suggests the movie might, in fact, be amazing. Well, for once, trailers don’t lie – The Carter is a masterpiece, an incredibly vivid and detailed look into the life and process of a great artist.

At the beginning of the film, a title card apologizes for the fact that the filmmakers were never able to sit down and have a formal interview with Weezy, and that he withdrew his support from the film. Well, they shouldn’t have bothered. Number one, they have enough footage of other people interviewing Lil’ Wayne, not to mention in-depth Q&As with everyone from Birdman to Wayne’s best friend to Wayne’s adorable twelve-year-old daughter (who busts a startling good freestyle). Secondly, and more importantly, the fimmakers had an all-access pass to Weezy’s life for six months, shooting as a fly on the wall in all manner of intimate situations. You see Wayne dump a wad of money the size of a cement block into his suitcase. You see Wayne in concert. You see Wayne’s birthplace, Hollygrove, in New Orleans. You see Wayne on drugs, pounding sizzurp and smoking copious weed. There’s tons of comedy, intentional and otherwise (mostly intentional), and Wayne drops incredible science throughout; the best is one interview where he lists everything he’ll legalize, from prostitution to “putting cocaine back in Coke.” But the cinéma verité approach serves us best by showing the audience Wayne’s non-stop work ethic and endless creativity. In the hotel room, on the tour bus, wherever he lays his hat, Wayne is recording, pushing himself to new creative heights. You see him lay down his part for T.I.’s all-star posse jam “Swagga Like Us,” along with countless verses that may never even see the light of day – and they are all masterpieces: the guy simply sweats art. And a subtle, in-depth look into Wayne’s addictions – contrasting his public persona with how he addresses them in his songs – proves one of the most affecting sequences in the film. Best of all is when Weezy busts an impromptu speech to the camera in the midst of recording a song that could’ve come straight from Brian Eno: “All knowledge comes from repetition,” he states, and he’s right – certainly, as his work ethic makes clear, it’s at the core of his fame. Yet while he repeats his process over and over again – play live show, record, go to hotel, record, get on bus, record, repeat as necessary – everything that comes out of his mouth seems jarringly new. That’s what’s most awe-inspiring about this film’s depiction – despite everything that could hold Wayne back, from addiction to hangers on to the challenges of his environment, at this point, he seems incapable of making anything wack.

Why Wayne opposed the release of this film is unclear from its contents. Yes, it is shockingly intimate – anyone would be startled to see their life captured in such unflinching detail. But at the same time, The Carter paints its subject as a highly sympathetic figure: he’s self-destructive, yes, a possible Kurt Cobain of hip-hop, as he’s very aware – but that’s just one facet of an artist who could be on the level of a Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davis in his chosen genre. In a truly gut-wrenching scene, Wayne refuses to acknowledge his own mortality: you become convinced that, through his sheer determination, he might even be able to beat death the way his late, great peers Tupac and Biggie did not. More than anything, Wayne here is all-consumingly charismatic. Title cards flash onscreen to place us geographically, moving the action from Amsterdam to Atlanta to New York and L.A., but they prove largely superfluous. As the footage demonstrates, wherever he is, it’s clear that it’s Wayne’s world above all else: his everyday truly consists of his microphone and his mind, no matter what city he’s in (although it’s helpfully pointed out that Amsterdam is special “because weed is legal there, and Wayne likes weed.”). Immersing oneself intimately in his universe as The Carter does shows truly what separates a superstar like Lil’ Wayne from the rest of us. As he says himself midway through the film, “You have to be it, and thank God I am.”