The past month has been a musically exhilarating month for me. We had J. Cole’s Born Sinner released on the same day as Kanye West’s Yeezus, then Wale’s The Gifted the week after and then Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail followed. I have been up in a buzz about the four albums, chucking a rant about Yeezus and praising the other three in particular Wale‘s album.
In 2010, I posted about two songs he released which made me feel like having a Ghanaian/Nigerian house party with all the jollof and fried chicken on offer with Hiplife blasting through the speakers! Olubowale Victor Akintimehin aka. Wale was born in Washington DC to Nigerian parents who moved to the United States from Austria in the late 70s. I have noticed that he always keeps his African and DC roots on his lips, whether it’s in songs or interviews.
I have been listening to Wale since his mixtapes 100 Miles and Running, Back to the Future, Mixtape About Nothing and More About Nothing. So when his first album Attention Deficit dropped in late 2009, I was excited that the world was officially hearing Wale. However, Attention Deficit was a commercial flop. His label of three years dropped him and Wale because a free agent for the next two years. You could say Wale was down and out until Rick Ross signed him to Maybach Music. I remember reading about Wale‘s Maybach signing and thinking ‘Uh Oh! Wale is going to become all Rick Ross ghetto and lose his touch!’. Verses I had heard by Wale in Maybach songs proved me right. Musically it sounded like he was still angry about what had happened to him in the aftermath of Attention Deficit and I was sadly turned off by him. He lifted his game with his second album Ambition, but I wasn’t completely convinced.
In the midst of being hooked on J. Cole’s Born Sinner, I started hearing good things about Wale’s The Gifted. Radio hosts and blogs were saying it was Wale’s best album to date and would be the album of the Summer. Since Yeezus was such a disappointment, I felt like I had room to give another album a chance on my daily playlist!
They say ‘Third time’s a charm‘ and The Gifted is a charm! It’s been on rotation since I got it. There are the soothing vocals of Sam Dew in LoveHATE thing (my favourite song), the layering of sounds in Bricks with Yo Gotti and Lyfe Jennings, the bounce element of Rotation and the badness of Rihanna in Bad.
Now I am back on Wale’s bandwagon!
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