Complex recently caught up with Wale to discuss his upcoming album with Rick Ross, Meek Mills and Pill, Self Made. During the interview, the D.C. emcee discussed how he fits into the Maybach Music scheme and how it’s affected his music. He said that the move to Rozay’s imprint hasn’t change anything about the content of his lyrics, but that it’s allowed him to branch out musically.
“I’m the deep-thinking, spend too much money on sneakers, member of Maybach Music,” he explained. “I’m not out there trying to do what Pill’s doing or Rozay’s doing. I am the deep-thinking, overly analytical–maybe sometimes emotional—but it’s that same emotional as ‘Pac for me. What they call emotional now, they call it whining…I can’t give you the sound you want to hear because it’s the sound I want to make. If I want to talk about the fucking sex trade on a fucking Lex Luger beat that sounds ‘B.M.F.’-esque then let me do that! That’s what I want to do. Just because I’m making a deep song about deep shit, it doesn’t mean I have to go be deep sounding.”
Wale also discussed how he and fellow XXL Freshman Kid Cudi squashed their feud from last year. He explained that Cudi called him one day and they worked out their issues respectfully. He also revealed that he has since worked with the G.O.O.D. Music rapper on a song for his album.
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“Cudi just called me,” he explained. “He was like, ‘Man, I fucks with you man, you know?’ We just had a real brother conversation. It was a long conversation but a lot of things needed to be said. Some of the things that he said hurt and I’m sure some of the things I’ve said or done probably hurt. The nigga told me what was on his mind and I respect that. We handled it like men.”
He also added, “He’s going to be on my upcoming album. When we first got cool again, he said, ‘What have you been working on?’ I said, ‘This song that I just got. You would sound good on it.’ The song is produced by this guy from France, Spiff TV actually brought me the beat. He recorded it from his iPhone, Ross’ producer mixed it down, and it sounds like a real song. He’s actually redoing the hook. It’s kind of a Camp Lo vibe. I don’t want to call it what we say throughout the song which is, ‘Rolling, we rolling, we rolling.'”
Wale also explained he feels that people in the industry don’t appreciate him as an artist. He even went as far as to call out Complex, saying he feels offended by how the magazine profits off the alternative lifestyle that he and other rappers live.
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“Sometimes I wake up and think the world hates me,” he said. “I feel like the industry might hate me. But that’s the mentality I grew up in because I’m black. I’ve been trained to believe the world hates niggas. It’s society. Like, being pulled over at church and being 14 years old? It makes you look at the police differently. There were times when I was in the front seat and they told me, ‘Don’t do nothing,’ and they took me out the car, and they pulled the gun out on my man and everything. I’ve seen it all. I’m not bitter to nobody man. If I was bitter I wouldn’t even talk to a lot of them. I wouldn’t be doing no interviews.
“Especially with Complex. I thought they were really trying to…I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit offended. I thought there’s a market that myself, Cudi, and a couple other artists helped. [We didn’t help it] survive, because Marc Ecko doesn’t need none of us. But I felt it was a company that we helped keep thriving. Them little kids in DC, they wouldn’t know nothing about no damn Nudies and no damn APCs and all that if it wasn’t for me. So I’m more or less the mid-Atlantic ambassador for the alternative lifestyle that Complex is promoting. We—and when I say we, I’m including myself and the niggas at Complex—are the people in the school that are like, ‘What the fuck is those? What’s that?'”
