Rappers are, for the most part, social creatures by nature — especially the ones who have been around for as long as Wale and reached the heights he has. No matter how self-contained, introverted, or iconoclastic they may be, their livelihood depends on being among people. You just can’t perform for an empty room; rap might be therapy, but not if there’s no one to listen.
So, it’s probably fair to say that the last 18 months have taken a special toll on those of us whose occupation is to entertain the rest of us. Rather than hitting the road and touching crowds from stages across the globe, artists were forced to find other ways to keep themselves busy. For Wale, it was video games.
But not just any video games. In case you couldn’t tell from his decade-plus of EPs, mixtapes, and albums, as well as his prodigious social media presence, Wale is a peculiarist of the highest order. As he tells me via Zoom while he and his team cruise the Capital Beltway that encircles Washington DC — the center of the home region Wale has loudly claimed from the very beginning of rap career — there are some games he can’t play.
One game, in particular, saw him take great delight in tweeting about throughout the initial lockdowns in 2020: Streets Of Rage 4. His proud tweets whenever he acquired a new accomplishment in the game for several weeks during the pandemic were a part of what drew me, and surely many others, to the nostalgic favorite.
stylist: MIQUELLE WEST
@miquellewest_
DESIGNED BY: DAISY JAMES
@DJAMESDESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
Paul L. Carter
EDITION 07
OCTOBER 2021
“DONE PLAYING GAMES”
OCTOBER 14 2021
BY: AARON WILLIAMS
WALE
“I love side-scroll beat em' ups,” he enthuses. “I love games I can't get lost in. I have a bad sense of direction. I'm really, really bad with left to right, up, down, and open-world games. My ADD is too powerful for open-world games like GTA [Grand Theft Auto]. I just end up doing stuff like trying to shoot innocent people for no reason just because of ADD, but Streets Of Rage is focused, go right and just keep fighting.”
A light bulb goes on for both of us; you can almost hear the penny dropping as we both latch onto the obvious metaphor for Wale’s career at the same time – because if there is any apt metaphor for it, “go right and just keep fighting” fits Wale’s long career arch to a T. As the conversation turns toward Wale’s upcoming new album, Folarin II, and ranges back through years of missteps, recoveries, and his ever-constant battle for acknowledgement as one of rap’s greats, it’s a metaphor we keep returning to, much like the straightforward but cyclical nature of the game itself.
One of the accomplishments that the game rewards players with a letter rank, from A-D, with an “S” rank denoting a near-perfect performance in each game’s level or in the game overall. The challenge of reaching that rank on varying degrees of difficulty is part of what keeps Wale coming back to it. Again, there’s a metaphor for his rap career here; he’s indisputably a performer with S-rank ability who feels he has yet to receive that recognition from the audience, which is prone to leaving him off of coveted “greatest of all time” lists. Folarin II, though, is where he hopes to correct this oversight, after over a decade of grinding away.
“go right and just keep fighting” fits Wale’s long career arch to a t.”
While Wale was far from the first rapper to reference video games and sneaker culture in his rhymes (The Notorious B.I.G. had a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis in 1994, a decade before Wale would receive his first recognition on local radio), he was part of that first wave of rappers who made such things central to their music as an emergent newcomer in what would come to be called “the blog era.” These were the first true millennial rappers, who’d come of age listening to greats like Biggie and Jay-Z, but who perhaps didn’t relate to their idols’ gritty narratives of street hustling and violent revenge.
They were kids who had Super Nintendos that their parents bought them from working blue and white-collar jobs, rather than dealing drugs and committing home invasions. As much as Nas and Tupac could be counted among their heroes, so too could the Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog. Where prior generations had grown up ducking stick-up kids to hold onto their coveted Air Jordans, kids like Wale were instead flipping their retro Jordan releases on internet forums like NikeTalk. Their raps reflected it.
Into this primordial perfect storm of influences, rappers like Curren$y, Drake, J. Cole, Kid Cudi, The Cool Kids, and more began trading on their more down-to-Earth influences and inspirations, penning tracks about loving rap about crime, but keeping it at arm’s length from themselves. Wale himself first gained prominence in 2006 with “Dig Dug,” his ode to DC’s local funk offshoot genre, go-go. (Incidentally, Dig Dug is also the name of a video game, which Wale also references on the song.) He would go on to capitalize on the buzz generated by this single with a successful run of singular mixtapes inspired by his favorite elements of pop culture, including go-go (2007’s 100 Miles And Running) and Seinfeld (2008’s The Mixtape About Nothing).
“Where we come from nobody was getting record deals, man,” Wale muses. “Where we come from, I'm on the train, texting the girl that I like, skipping class to go meet with Jay-Z.”
“Where we come from nobody was getting record deals, man,” Wale muses.
“Where we come from, I'm on the train, texting the girl that I like, skipping class to go meet with Jay-Z.”
Photo Assistant: Patricia Gomez
@patygonia
DESIGNED BY: DAISY JAMES
@DJAMESDESIGN
Photographer: Peter Donaghy
@donslens
Those mixtapes and that Jay-Z connection became Wale’s first major-label record deal with Interscope and eventually, his aptly-titled debut album, Attention Deficit, in 2009. Packed to the brim with all of Wale’s favorite things, it was a fitting representation of who he was at the time: A native of the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, a child of Nigerian parents, an unapologetic streetwear and sneaker head, an acolyte of his hometown’s go-go legends like Chuck Brown and The Junkyard Band, and one of the wittiest, ferociously gifted lyricists of any generation in hip-hop history. It also constituted his first big “boss battle” — an exceedingly difficult challenge a player must overcome in a video game in order to advance to the next level.
The album was a commercial disappointment (after, it must be said, Interscope under-shipped it by several thousands of copies), making Wale one of the first of his blog era brethren to disappoint fans' expectations of a massive breakout. In contrast, his close friend and frequent collaborator J. Cole's debut album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 a little under two years later. Wale was dropped by Interscope in the wake of the album's release.
It could be said that this constituted his game tutorial, that first time the game throws a player into the fire and really kicks their ass, just so they can get an initial taste of how tough things can get — and how much tougher the player will need to be to survive. Wale, in his stubborn way, has not just survived but thrived since then, finding a second life as a member of Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group roster alongside the likes of Meek Mill.
“I've done a lot of things that I probably shouldn't have done out of frustration and feeling like I'm not being heard, but I'm blessed,” he admits. “And I'm just grateful. [I] got a legion of people that still fuck with me through my good and bad. Even though my bad hasn't been as bad as some others bad, but my good and bad. So I just credit that to: All I know is work, man. I never saw my father when I was young. Never. He was either driving cabs all day or in Nigeria. My mother was always working. So all I know is the work. When I was playing football... I ain't lifting like that. I know that. But when it came to practice: hardest worker, I stayed later, got there early. All I know is to work hard at what you do or what you're passionate about.”
Wale released his next five albums under Ross’ imprint, including his most recent ones, Wow… That’s Crazy, which also came out under the Warner Records umbrella. Not many artists in hip-hop get second chances, but Wale has made the most of his, garnering his own No. 1 albums (2013’s The Gifted and 2015’s The Album About Nothing, the sequel to his breakout, Seinfeld-inspired tape) and becoming one of the premier hitmakers in the genre.
You might not know it from a quick perusal of Twitter, though. For all his mind-bending bars and gift for keeping himself at the forefront of both rap radio and streaming playlists, he takes a seemingly undue amount of abuse on social media. He was ahead of the curve on the current wave of socially and politically engaged rap music, seasoning his lifestyle raps with musings on police brutality and colorism long before they became buzz terms on Twitter feeds and Instagram trends.
“Even on ‘Down South’ [the second official single from Folarin II] I'm saying some really heavy stuff,” he notes. “Sometimes I think they hate the messenger. Some folks hate the messenger.” He acknowledged that some of this comes from his personality online, his hyper-defensiveness early in his career. Prior to refocusing on highlighting the praise he receives, he would lash out at anyone who made a negative comment, whether they tagged him or not. He knows that he’s responsible for some of his public perception, but he also wonders whether there aren’t other factors causing people to overlook the messages he’s littered his music with over the last 10 years. By way of example, he recites the segment of the verse he’s referring to:
“All I know is to work hard at what you do or what you're passionate about.”
What's the sense of it all?
Pimpin' powder, and pussy tryna make pennies
See niggas lie on the stand, guess hell ain't harder than prison, who knows
In the 90's a traffic stop get you tickets, a joke
Now they find you a traffic stop get you riddled with holes
We be livin' too fast, we be sippin' it slow
One of my niggas was sellin' work, now he sellin' out shows
I mean face it that's growth, pay attention take notes
You over forty and movin' work better be by the boat
Better be by the dock, better not be by your home
If niggas really wan' hurt you, they gonna leave you alone
“The point I'm making is it'll be people that will judge or making an opinion about my music and A, you don't know this environment, or B, never took the time to even listen to what I'm really saying on the album,” he says. “That happens far too many times. You wish people would really listen, but I don't even blame them because there's so much music coming out.” Does he feel as though he’s gotten overlooked or lost in the furor?
“Yes,” he agrees. “I don't think a lot of people don't know that me, Cole, and Pharrell opened for Jay-Z. We did a whole college tour... A lot of people don't know I opened for Jay before that, even in Europe… A lot of people don't know I opened for Rihanna in Europe. Because there was no Snapchat. I wasn't walking around with a cameraman for YouTube all day. It was a weird time… We got a little bit of the Mandela effect going on in this generation.” However, he says, “I might just try to do the best I can because there'll be a time when it will all connect and everybody is going to put everything together and then it'll all makes sense to some people that it might not make sense to. I would not be lying to say it wasn't frustrating, but ain't nothing to do about it but just keep pushing. It’ll be on Folarin II, where I wrote these subtle reminders all throughout the album.”
When I ask him how this album will be different from the 2012 Folarin mixtape, which featured appearances from 2 Chainz, Chinx Drugz, French Montana, Nipsey Hussle, Rick Ross, and Scarface, among others, Wale compares the project to Jay-Z’s career-defining 2001 release, calling it a “Blueprint” record. “I feel like the process on this one was pretty much, as soon as I got into the mode, it just started feeling like, ‘You know what? Where I am, how I feel, how I know who I am, regardless of what anybody's talking about,’ it started just speaking to me more. I was like, ‘This is Folarin II.’ Folarin is when I started really coming into my own. I really was in that space. I was just singing with my chest. I think that's what's happening now.”
“It's a space that I was in, this bubble,” he continues. “Some days I felt like telling the stories and some days I felt like talking about things going on back home. Some days I felt like talking about shit. The next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I want to do something else. It was just a moment in time, this bubble of where I'm at…. I made sure I spelled it out, it's more grandiose. I think all of them have a different thing, man. Folarin II is its own thing, but it's just the same intentions and the same feeling that I had when I made Folarin 1.”
“Folarin II is its own thing, but it's just the same intentions and the same feeling that I had when I made Folarin 1.”
What's the sense of it all?
Pimpin' powder, and pussy tryna make pennies
See niggas lie on the stand, guess hell ain't harder than prison, who knows
In the 90's a traffic stop get you tickets, a joke
Now they find you a traffic stop get you riddled with holes
We be livin' too fast, we be sippin' it slow
One of my niggas was sellin' work, now he sellin' out shows
I mean face it that's growth, pay attention take notes
You over forty and movin' work better be by the boat
Better be by the dock, better not be by your home
If niggas really wan' hurt you, they gonna leave you alone
“The point I'm making is it'll be people that will judge or making an opinion about my music and A, you don't know this environment, or B, never took the time to even listen to what I'm really saying on the album,” he says. “That happens far too many times. You wish people would really listen, but I don't even blame them because there's so much music coming out.” Does he feel as though he’s gotten overlooked or lost in the furor?
“Yes,” he agrees. “I don't think a lot of people don't know that me, Cole, and Pharrell opened for Jay-Z. We did a whole college tour... A lot of people don't know I opened for Jay before that, even in Europe… A lot of people don't know I opened for Rihanna in Europe. Because there was no Snapchat. I wasn't walking around with a cameraman for YouTube all day. It was a weird time… We got a little bit of the Mandela effect going on in this generation.” However, he says, “I might just try to do the best I can because there'll be a time when it will all connect and everybody is going to put everything together and then it'll all makes sense to some people that it might not make sense to. I would not be lying to say it wasn't frustrating, but ain't nothing to do about it but just keep pushing. It’ll be on Folarin II, where I wrote these subtle reminders all throughout the album.”
When I ask him how this album will be different from the 2012 Folarin mixtape, which featured appearances from 2 Chainz, Chinx Drugz, French Montana, Nipsey Hussle, Rick Ross, and Scarface, among others, Wale compares the project to Jay-Z’s career-defining 2001 release, calling it a “Blueprint” record. “I feel like the process on this one was pretty much, as soon as I got into the mode, it just started feeling like, ‘You know what? Where I am, how I feel, how I know who I am, regardless of what anybody's talking about,’ it started just speaking to me more. I was like, ‘This is Folarin II.’ Folarin is when I started really coming into my own. I really was in that space. I was just singing with my chest. I think that's what's happening now.”
“It's a space that I was in, this bubble,” he continues. “Some days I felt like telling the stories and some days I felt like talking about things going on back home. Some days I felt like talking about shit. The next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I want to do something else. It was just a moment in time, this bubble of where I'm at…. I made sure I spelled it out, it's more grandiose. I think all of them have a different thing, man. Folarin II is its own thing, but it's just the same intentions and the same feeling that I had when I made Folarin 1.”
In addition to video games and sneakers, Wale’s other big preoccupation is with wrestling. The appeal is obvious; in the same way rappers create characters for themselves, overcoming financial and structural obstacles, wrestlers do the same thing with physical ones. They can both become larger-than-life, exaggerating characteristics, creating their own narrative, and redefining themselves in the public eye. However, this wasn’t always the case. At one point, Wale was really the only rapper making himself such a visible fan of the sport. Just like with sneakers and livestreaming — that’s right, Wale was livestreaming himself on the now-defunct UStream, years before Instagram and TikTok allowed similar functionality to connect artists with fans — he was just a little bit ahead of his time.
“You know, now there is a little slight shift in wrestling,” he muses. “You got to look at guys like myself and Westside Gunn, Smoke DZA, Flatbush Zombies, we've been a part of that culture for a long time. And Black journalists too, Black writers are talking more about it and uplifting our Black wrestlers. And this is a special time in that culture. The conversations are happening. I work closely with Neil Lawi at the WWE, and I talked to Triple H last week on text. So there's definitely... It's an interesting time for wrestling. You got the RNC podcast, you got the WrassleRap [social media movement], you got Kaz[eem Famuyide] doing it so crazy... Media uplifting the culture, you got Westside Gunn on the crazy run right now, uplifting the culture. So we love where it's at right now. We love where it's going.”
Again, it feels like Wale’s interests parallel his real-life trajectory as an entertainer. He’s always on the ball before anyone else — but he rarely remains there alone for long. It just takes others a while to catch on. On being one of the first highly visible artists bigging up Nigeria before the Afrobeats genre broke stateside, he says, “It's one of them things that I feel like I knew was inevitable and it's not going to stop anytime soon. So I'm proud of all my guys and girls. I'm just grateful that I can be somebody seen as part of that culture.” Isn’t he being too humble? “Nah. I've been valid. My thing is if you know, you know. So I'm not overly concerned with that. Everybody know what I do and what I've did. And if they don't, Google is free.”
He takes the same attitude toward the world’s skeptical view of go-go, which still threads through his music like the ever-critical stitching holding together his favorite Nikes. “Go-go is a genre where you got to experience that shit live to all the way, get it for real,” he says. “After you experienced it live, you have a different appreciation for it. This is what I assumed because I think I was maybe 13 years old when I realized go-go was only local. I thought everybody back then knew what go-go was. When I was a kid, I thought everybody in the whole world knew who those people was. Now that I've learned so much about the actual music and instruments and mixing and culture from all over the world, I can understand why we never really made that leap after [Junkyard Band’s] “Sardines” and [E.U’s] “Doin’ Da Butt.”
Now, fifteen years into a career that wasn't supposed to last this long, Wale can look back and take stock of how far he's come. The things he was right about — go-go's slow burn, the rise of Nigeria as a musical powerhouse, rap's affinity for wrestling — and the mistakes he's made, namely being way too online. Only, that's not how it works, in the video games he adores, or in life.
“I took myself out of a place of concerning myself with that,” he assures me when I question whether he’s really okay with being the overlooked, underrated vanguard for the rest of his career. Keep going right. Keep fighting. Worry about the rank at the next level, at the end of the game… or let the gameplay speak for itself.
“I'm already him…” he says, pointing out the accomplishments that are more meaningful to him than the hazy recognition of fickle fans. “I can go to Ardmore with my cousins, and they just shooting dice. I'm just sipping with them, watching everybody play basketball, talking shit like a regular nigga. Then I can go to the White House and open for the State of the Union. Picture that. On the same day. Be the first rapper to perform in the White House and then be at a stadium the same day.”
To let Wale tell it, he’s already received his S-rank, whether it’s been acknowledged or not. His gaming philosophy has turned out to be the key to his career longevity and his real-life success. As it turns out, the trick to learning to let go of external validation has been for Wale to redefine his legacy for himself — which is exactly what he’s done. “I've been doing legend shit, man,” he says. “And I don't say that with no cockiness. That's literal fact. If I could find a more humble way to say that, I probably would've worded it like that, but that's literally just what happens. And I think that's what's legend.”
“I've been doing legend shit, man.”
In addition to video games and sneakers, Wale’s other big preoccupation is with wrestling. The appeal is obvious; in the same way rappers create characters for themselves, overcoming financial and structural obstacles, wrestlers do the same thing with physical ones. They can both become larger-than-life, exaggerating characteristics, creating their own narrative, and redefining themselves in the public eye. However, this wasn’t always the case. At one point, Wale was really the only rapper making himself such a visible fan of the sport. Just like with sneakers and livestreaming — that’s right, Wale was livestreaming himself on the now-defunct UStream, years before Instagram and TikTok allowed similar functionality to connect artists with fans — he was just a little bit ahead of his time.
“You know, now there is a little slight shift in wrestling,” he muses. “You got to look at guys like myself and Westside Gunn, Smoke DZA, Flatbush Zombies, we've been a part of that culture for a long time. And Black journalists too, Black writers are talking more about it and uplifting our Black wrestlers. And this is a special time in that culture. The conversations are happening. I work closely with Neil Lawi at the WWE, and I talked to Triple H last week on text. So there's definitely... It's an interesting time for wrestling. You got the R&C podcast, you got the WrassleRap [social media movement], you got Kaz[eem Famuyide] doing it so crazy... Media uplifting the culture, you got Westside Gunn on the crazy run right now, uplifting the culture. So we love where it's at right now. We love where it's going.”
Again, it feels like Wale’s interests parallel his real-life trajectory as an entertainer. He’s always on the ball before anyone else — but he rarely remains there alone for long. It just takes others a while to catch on. On being one of the first highly visible artists bigging up Nigeria before the Afrobeats genre broke stateside, he says, “It's one of them things that I feel like I knew was inevitable and it's not going to stop anytime soon. So I'm proud of all my guys and girls. I'm just grateful that I can be somebody seen as part of that culture.” Isn’t he being too humble? “Nah. I've been valid. My thing is if you know, you know. So I'm not overly concerned with that. Everybody know what I do and what I've did. And if they don't, Google is free.”
He takes the same attitude toward the world’s skeptical view of go-go, which still threads through his music like the ever-critical stitching holding together his favorite Nikes. “Go-go is a genre where you got to experience that shit live to all the way, get it for real,” he says. “After you experienced it live, you have a different appreciation for it. This is what I assumed because I think I was maybe 13 years old when I realized go-go was only local. I thought everybody back then knew what go-go was. When I was a kid, I thought everybody in the whole world knew who those people was. Now that I've learned so much about the actual music and instruments and mixing and culture from all over the world, I can understand why we never really made that leap after [Junkyard Band’s] “Sardines” and [E.U’s] “Doin’ Da Butt.”
“I've been doing legend shit, maN.”
Wale is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
What's the sense of it all?
Pimpin' powder, and pussy tryna make pennies
See niggas lie on the stand, guess hell ain't harder than prison, who knows
In the 90's a traffic stop get you tickets, a joke
Now they find you a traffic stop get you riddled with holes
We be livin' too fast, we be sippin' it slow
One of my niggas was sellin' work, now he sellin' out shows
I mean face it that's growth, pay attention take notes
You over forty and movin' work better be by the boat
Better be by the dock, better not be by your home
If niggas really wan' hurt you, they gonna leave you alone
What's the sense of it all?
Pimpin' powder, and pussy tryna make pennies
See niggas lie on the stand, guess hell ain't harder than prison, who knows
In the 90's a traffic stop get you tickets, a joke
Now they find you a traffic stop get you riddled with holes
We be livin' too fast, we be sippin' it slow
One of my niggas was sellin' work, now he sellin' out shows
I mean face it that's growth, pay attention take notes
You over forty and movin' work better be by the boat
Better be by the dock, better not be by your home
If niggas really wan' hurt you, they gonna leave you alone
stylist: bobby wesley
@bobbywesley
HAIR: DR. Kari williams
@drkariwill
stylist: bobby wesley
@bobbywesley
stylist: miquelle west
@miquellewest_
Photographer: PAUL L. CARTER
@LANGSTONCARTER