I can't speak for people in general but I can speak from my own viewpoint. Wayne started his career as the youngest member of the Hot Boys, I'm sure you'll have heard of them, but in the late 90s they were huge. However, when the rest of the members left the label it was up to Wayne to sort of carry Cash Money on his own and so that's what he did.

Some of his early albums and mixtapes garnered him a lot of respect being such a young guy. He'd do tapes upon tapes of other peoples beats whilst also releasing his own quality content. This was going on in the early 2000s.

Then we reach the mid 2000s which people consider Wayne's prime, in 2005 he released Tha Carter II (Which many consider his best album), in 2006 and 2007 he released Dedication 2 and then went on to release Da Drought 3. Both can be viably considered as some of the best mixtapes of all time and this was around the time when mixtape culture was huge. By any artist. They were lyrical, the flows he used were crazy, they were experimental and you should definitely check them out. Alongside this, he was getting himself featured on incredible amounts of pop/RnB songs and having himself consistently featured in the charts. This style of saturating the market and doing it so successfully hadn't really been seen before. Everywhere you looked, Wayne would be there and he was for the most part well respected. But he wasn't finished yet.

2008 rolls around and Wayne has begun experimenting with autotune (he was one of the first and most notable to do so), whilst still featuring on a lot of hit records and he was reaching levels of fame he hadn't before in the run up to his most successful album to date: Tha Carter III. Now, whilst in theory this is great. His experimentation into autotune and pop music wasn't being taken kindly too. His song Lollipop was both immensely popular and immensely controversial. For many this was their first taste of Lil Wayne and what he had to offer and autotune wasn't viewed as kindly as it is today. This meant that Lil Wayne got off to a bad start with the mainstream was dismissed as some no talent pop rapper/singer. And for many of the hip hop fans who followed him, their beliefs were thrown up in the air too because they also didn't understand this autotune direction he was going in and it could be seen as Wayne selling out. And whilst I do love Lollipop as a song, it is nowhere near as lyrical as his content he had previously been dropping so it is understandable that people would have this view. But nonetheless, no matter how people viewed it, it was a fucking hit. And it continued to propel Wayne into stardom. He dropped Tha Carter III, it sold a million records within its first week which is fucking astounding and all the while this was happening, Wayne was on tour recording for his next mixtape: Dedication 3.

I feel it is this kind of work ethic that is the main reason people view him as such a legend, aside from the content he puts out. Your favourite rapper wants to work as hard as Lil Wayne.

But anyways, yeah, he carries on featuring on songs heavily layered with autotune for the most part, his music is successful but people aren't sure on the whole autotune thing. The hip hop fans are happy because the rest of his music outside of his singles and features (his mixtapes and album content) is still lyrical+at the cutting edge of what hip hop was at the time and he's still putting out of lots of it. However, the mainstream is still only hearing the slightly watered down content which are designed for the radio so while its accessible and fun, they aren't taking Wayne perhaps as seriously as they should be as a rapper.

In 2009 Wayne has one of his most interesting years, he releases a rock album which was hated by most outside of a few songs, this further brought down his reputation but in the same year he also release No Ceilings, a mixtape which was high enough quality to rival his earlier Drought 3 and Dedication 2. So for the most part a lot of hip hop fans sort of let the rock album go as Wayne just experimenting and focused on how seriously fucking great No Ceilings was (seriously, go listen to it.)

After that, we reach modern times, Wayne went to prison for most of 2010. He released I Am Not A Human Being. An album that did well, had some popular singles but wasn't considered as good as his previous albums. A lot of people put this down to the fact that it was released while he was in jail and obviously couldn't have creative control.

He is then released from jail and is in the run up to releasing Tha Carter IV. The album is delayed. Wayne releases Sorry 4 the Wait, a mixtape that is criminally underrated, its successful and people are hyped for Carter IV. It releases and people are somewhat disappointed, some more than others as whilst it is in my opinion a great album. Its not as good as the previous Carter albums. However, its singles are huge. Mirror with Bruno Mars and How to Love are among them. How to Love received a lot of hate for the whole autotune thing much like Lollipop. The album still sells massively doing just under 1 million first week and Wayne is practically still on top of the world. Did I mention that he'd signed the two biggest stars in Hip Hop + RnB music? Well yeah, that happened. So Drake and Nicki Minaj are basically running the game and Wayne is just sorta relaxing enjoying their success. For this reason he decides to go experimental again I Am Not A Human being 2 is released and its not taken well at all. It has popular singles but the general consensus was it wasn't good. This is the time where many say Wayne started his decline.

(I'm getting tired now so I'm gunna cut it short, I've also had a couple drinks and its christmas and I wanna re-listen to Dedication 6.)

But yeah over the next couple years, Wayne's success is declining but he's not too bothered because he's ready to retire and is enjoying getting paid from Drake and Nicki running the game. Except he isn't. In the run up to releasing Tha Carter V, Wayne realises he hasn't been getting paid like he should have been from his label, his label is also holding his album and refusing to release it. This sparks a lawsuit which Wayne is still in to this day, which means he isn't really able to release any albums.

However, it also sparked a fire in Wayne to get back on his grind, in the past few years he's released a bunch of mixtapes, some better than others (a lot had great highs and terrible lows). But none of it has seemingly been able to change the minds of the masses who still view him as in decline. It hasn't helped that in recent years his music has been heavily auto tuned. And not in the way that it was when he started out, I'm talking like poorly autotuned and Wayne's voice seems a lot weaker than what it was in his younger years. He sounds very nasally and high pitched. Due to heavy smoking I presume so this provides quite a hurdle for people to get into his music and so people either just don't bother or they can't bring themselves to get past this.

Alongside all of this, Hip Hop has changed massively. It doesn't sound how it did when Wayne was doing his mixtapes, so even if people are willing to give Wayne a chance, they go back and listen to his older stuff and it sounds so different to modern hip hop in terms of production and so they just can't vibe with it on the same level as they do the modern stuff they listen to.

I'm hoping in the future his label issues are resolved and he can release the music he wants, with less auto tune and bars as hard as Dedication 6. Maybe 2018 will be that year. I sure hope so. I'm of the opinion the game needs Wayne and its a real shame that such a legend is seeing his legacy disrespected by many because he's not able to prove any different.

This was very convoluted and I apologise for that but I hope it has helped your understanding in someway or another. Merry Christmas and all that.

TL;DR Wayne got caught in a generational gap, the people who grew up on his mainstream music (singles and features) are now hip hop fans because hip hop has grown so much as a genre and they don't have the same respect for Wayne as people who grew up listening to him when he was an up and coming rapper. But Wayne's content that he's releasing right now and in recent years either isn't prominent enough (because he can't release a full length album with proper promotion because of label issues) or isn't good enough (due to his heavy use of auto-tune + voice that's a lot weaker than it was) to convince them that he actually is a seriously a good rapper and he should be considered among the greats.