They Keep Sayin' Whale, But My Name's Wale.

My friend put me on this guy Wale (pronounced Wah-Lay; don't say
Wall-ee, he's not a trash-compacting robot from the future). Check him out.
He grew up in Northwest D.C, and was was originally bred on the D.C.-indigenous funky, percussive hip-hop sub-genre called go-go. He blew up in 2006 when the track "Dig Dug (Shake It)" became popular in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The song became the most requested by a local artist in D.C. radio history, and was included on his first mixtape, Paint a Picture.
He has a Talib Kweli flow, a dash of Kanye's swag and bravado, and Wayne's metaphors and one-liners, without the non sequiturs. We'll call him a thinking man’s Weezy, minus the dope. His lyrics are smart, but not to the point where they get in the way. Mark Ronson describes him as, "A Cross Between Lil Wayne, Lupe Fiasco And Nas.
He describes himself as, "A little more Talib, less Jay-Z. A little less Nasir (Nas for those who don't know), more A-Z. A little more Consequence than Kanye, the underdog from the underground, Wale."
He's done five "official" mix tapes since 2006, three of which have received acclaim:100 Miles and Running (2007), Seinfeld-themed, The Mixtape About Nothing (2008) and Back to the Feature (2009). His Interscope Records debut album, Attention: Defecit, dropping October 20, is the exclamation point on four years of buzz-enducing mixtapes.
Aiming to break the monotony of hip-hop, you won't hear any two-step, lean back or snap on his album. One track, "Shades", featuring Chrisette Michelle, discusses inter-black racism, and ruminates on hip-hop's use of the n-word. The album also features songs about romantic dilemmas and maintaining his integrity amid the hype. On "The Bomb", Wale addresses whether his intellectual flow takes away from his street cred.
He spits: “I’m chastised. They say I’m not hood enough. Fuck it, I’m good – I just kill it with my rhetoric. A clip full of syllables, licking off shots like the last sip available. You cannot configure my particular curriculum. Ridiculous. You niggas don’t even deserve my syllabus.”
But he also likes to have some fun, so you won't need a dictionary or a textbook to enjoy the album. With production set to come from Mark Ronson, Cool & Dre, David Sitek, The Sleepwalkers, Sean C & LV of The Hitmen, and collabos from Bun B, Jazmine Sullivan, K'naan, and Marsha Ambrosius, the goal of Attention: Deficit is to be eclectic.
"I think it’s important to be a well-rounded individual, no matter what you do. And I apply that to the music I make — you have to let all of you show through. A part of me is very conscious, very politically aware and then there’s a side of me that thinks about girls 24/7, the side of me that likes to have fun." The album's first single is Chillin—which you may have heard—and features Lady Gaga.
I, personally, am glad. Hip-hop has gotten stagnant. Artists are trying to sell ringtones, not records. The rest are trying to sell drugs (or lying about selling them). I think Wale and Kanye are the link back to the old school. Yeah, Kanye whines a lot, and has a big ego, eh, eh, eh (no homo), but he's doing something different. You can hate on Kanye and 808s and Heartbreak, but nobody else in hip-hop was doing what he did on that album. Yeah, people were doing one or two tracks, but Kanye did a whole album. And it was on some real deal emotional stuff. To me, the monotony in hip-hop is disgusting, so this will be a welcomed change. Go to datpiff.com, or wherever you get your mixtapes, and pick up these. Make sure to grab that album when it comes out in October.