Courtesy of The Chamber Group
Wale is putting the finishing touches on his upcoming album, The Album About Nothing. If all goes according to schedule it should be out March 31, and he promises it’ll be different from anything he’s ever released—although exactly how is hard for him to say.
“I can’t really explain it,” he says. “It’s like trying to describe what an orange tastes like, other than sweet. It’s just a different sound from me, completely different. Different textures. It’s just very personal, a very personal album. I’m talking about a lot of things that people don’t know about me.”
If some of this talk sounds familiar, it’s because there’s a long history of rappers promising their next album will be personal. More often than not, of course, these claims precede albums that aren’t measurably any more or less personal than the ones that came before, but Wale insists he really is going to reveal more of himself this time.
“I just think it was time,” he says. “I’m very in tune with my fans. A lot of them want to hear more of what’s going on in my life. You know, J. Cole is my good friend, and he was telling me that I need to just let it go, just let it all out. And that’s just what I started doing when I was making this album.”
J. Cole may be as good a model for Wale as any right now. Like Wale, Cole often seems torn between two identities. One is that of a considerate, deep-thinking rapper with a loyal hip-hop fanbase. The other is that of a reliable radio hit maker with broad appeal. Inevitably, these identities sometimes clash with each other.
And so, on his new album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, Cole decided to stop playing both sides of the aisle. He made a record modeled after his mixtapes, with a whole lot of rapping but no flashy guests or big pop hooks. It was a savvy move. Rap fans praised Cole’s “no singles, no guests” gambit, and the record outsold expectations, debuting at the top of the Billboard charts, even without radio support. It seems that these days, in an age when album sales are down across the board, pleasing a targeted base is a more effective strategy than chasing the masses.
Given Cole’s precedent, then, it shouldn’t be too surprising that Wale may also be breaking from the radio-flagging mentality that has defined his career since he aligned himself with Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group in 2011.
“I’m not really chasing radio,” Wale insists. “If I put a record out before the album, I’m not going to do the whole song and dance trying to get it on radio. It’s just going to be like, ‘This is what it is. This is how I’m approaching it.’ I feel like I’ve earned a certain spot in the hip-hop world. You know I’ve made a great body of work. Some of my shit is controversial, but it’s all good music in most people’s opinion.”
That, of course, is debatable. Critics seem to agree that Wale’s output since signing with Maybach Music has been uneven, if not downright uninspired (his 2013 album The Gifted, in particular, found him on autopilot). But Wale pushes back against the widespread narrative that Maybach changed him into a shallower, more commercial artist.
Signing with the label, he says, “definitely injected a new life into my brand. It’s definitely catapulted me to the mainstream, urban world. And I think at the same time the slight hindrance has been the perception that my music and my content has changed, that I went broad. That couldn’t be further from the truth, but we live in a lazy society where people don’t know enough to form opinions themselves. For them it’s just monkey see, monkey do, like, ‘I heard this person say that, so that’s how it is.’”
The Album About Nothing, then, could be his chance to win back his early supporters, and to prove that he’s the same introspective rapper he was before the hits started coming a little too easily. He’s feeling good about it.
“The inside joke in my crew is that I have two brains, and when they’re both working at the same time I start sweating, and I start going to a weird place,” Wale says. “So on March 31, I just want to take everybody there with me.”
Wale headlines the Rave on Saturday, Jan. 17 at 8 p.m., supported by Audio Push, Bizzy Crook and Yo-Dot.
