"Tha Carter III" received widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 84, based on 26 reviews. AllMusic editor David Jeffries praised Wayne's "entertaining wordplay and plenty of well-executed, left-field ideas". "The Guardian"s Alex Macpherson lauded Wayne's rapping, stating "Just trying to keep up with Wayne's mind as he proves the case is a thrill. He breaks language down into building blocks for new metaphors, exploiting every possible semantic and phonetic loophole for humour and yanking pop culture references into startling new contexts".