But to do so would be to overlook Wale’s own story and the way in which he invests himself into his work. The record is perhaps even more susceptible to this treatment thanks to the recent release to universal acclaim of contemporary Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, which is about as get-your-elbows-in-Van-Gogh-style and impressively outside-the-box as hip-hop gets. It would be easy to dismiss Nothing as just another commercialised art-hop album (think Kid Cudi or Wiz Khalifa), with all the inoffensive samples and ostensibly detached vocals. His latest effort, The Album About Nothing, does just that. But for a member of a sub-culture so concerned with being cool, Wale has always openly embraced his quirks and idiosyncrasies – his music has reflected this complexity and three-dimensionality. He’s worked frequently with the straight up gangster-rap guys like Rick Ross and is as equally chummy with ballers as Drizzy and Hove. Wale occupies a strange liminal in the hip-hop landscape.
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