What’s Next For Lil Wayne?

Wayne returned to the studio Monday night, according to multiple Twitter messages from Young Money/ Cash Money insiders, including Mack Maine, who tweeted, “It’s official Wayne laid his 1st verse!!!!! Torture!!!! YMCMB.”

He certainly has a lot to discuss in song, given his time spent inside the walls of Rikers Island the past eight months, and he surely wants to keep pace with his protégés, Drake and Nicki Minaj, both of whom saw their popularity skyrocket while Wayne was away.

“After we see the family, it’s back to the basics, back to the job,” Wayne’s label head, Bryan “Baby” Williams, told MTV News. “For Wayne, he just does what he feels with the music. I’m sure he’s gonna touch on personal things and his experience being incarcerated. But you never know with him, because he’s so slick with the words.

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“He’s in beast mode,” Baby added. “When you put a shining star in a cage, what else can you make out of it? You just put him in beast mode.”

Recent Cash Money signees Cool & Dre agreed. “Once he hears the beat, he’s gonna speak,” Cool said about Wayne’s next direction. “So the beat is gonna ask him what to do.”

“I think the one thing we could do is stand out the way,” Dre explained about getting in the studio with Wayne. “Get out the way. I’m sure he has so much inspiration built up right now.”

Lil Wayne also has a lot waiting on his plate. There’s plans for the next volume of his Dedication mixtape series with DJ Drama, which would seem like the easiest release for the rapper to push out first. Collaborative albums with T-Pain, Drake and Baby are also in the works, as well as Wayne contributing to another new Cash Money members album, DJ Khaled’s We the Best Forever.

And then there’s the matter of Weezy’s own solo project, the highly anticipated Tha Carter IV. “We’ll pick a date at the top of the year and go in,” Baby told MTV News last month of the album

T-Pain said he’s in no rush to finish his “T-Wayne” project with the recently freed superstar. “No, no, no,” he said from the red carpet of Wayne’s welcome-home bash. “His album, yes, everybody is waiting on that.”

In the meantime, expect a flurry of Wayne material to land online in the near future.

“Wayne is still the same Wayne,” Drake said of his mentor’s studio habits.

“He does mixtapes on the regular; it’s hard for me to keep up,” Baby added. “I been stopped keeping up when we’re putting out mixtapes. Wayne is the type of person, he’ll drop a song every day.”

When are you hoping to hear new music from Wayne? Let us know in the comments!