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Wale: Situational Comedy :: DC rapper Wale is poised to take a position among hip-hop elite

By Brandon Perkins   Photography by Matt Barnes

10/30/07 :: URB 150

In the back room of The Hundreds "office"—a dark space that really amounts to a glorified storage unit in an otherwise vacant building—Wale, pronounced "Wah-lay," pays only passing attention to next year's fashions and won't be paying anything to walk out the door with them. About five foot seven, he dribbles a blue and white outdoor basketball hard against the concrete floor and violates all palming rules as he pushes his six foot four manager, Dan Weisman (who works for the all-connected Advanced Alternative Media management company). The two scoff at each other's purported skills as Ben Hundreds piles a combination of prototype jeans, spring '08 hoodies and unstocked T-shirts into a bursting shopping bag. Occasionally, Wale picks up his dribble to touch the fabric of something hanging in the dim, basement-like light. "Do you have any button-ups?"

His apathy toward a gang of free shit might make sense if Wale was famous or something, but he's not. Wale isn't even signed. He doesn't have an album advance to front the few hundred dollars it'd take to throw at a week's worth of wardrobe from The Hundreds. Just a few hours prior, he pieced together crumpled singles from his pockets to pay for a cleanup at Legends Barbershop in Los Angeles and was visibly disgruntled by just how many he had to piece. Even earlier, at 6 AM, Weisman drove the six hours from Las Vegas because the one-hour flight to LA just wasn't economically feasible...never mind the private jet. And yet, The Hundreds, perhaps the forefront of hip-hopster couture and every sneaker head's wet dream, couldn't find anything they didn't want to give him.

The working musician may be a tired cliché two years into its acceptance, but Wale is perhaps the music world's first working celebrity. Being backed by Mark Ronson—a former URB cover star, the world's premier socialite DJ (fuck your "celebrity DJ") and all-around rad musician—certainly doesn't hurt. And, of course, Wale wasn't in Vegas to play some townie club. He was stealing the show at the VMAs by ripping apart Justice's hit single "D.A.N.C.E." But part of being a working celebrity is that the majority of the celebration comes from those within the industry circle. One MySpace message to Ronson after the MTV awards show mistakenly said that it was cool for him to bring on The Roots' Black Thought to spit over Justice. Wale is a celebrity that isn't yet famous. On his way to The Hundreds' "office," he was recognized by a fan for the very first time outside of his native Washington, DC.

* UNIFORM DEPRESSION *
Without having ever been, DC imagines to be a whole other universe. Maybe it's a place where negativity is tangible and anger seems to have its own dastardly palate. Maybe it's a city segregated by a glacial partition guarded by dark-suited men with weapons from the future. The much smaller side of the divider bears witness to senatorial aides fucking 16-year-old call girls with rolled-up hundred dollar bills supplied by oil and pharmaceutical companies, while more powerful men nod and point in clouds of gold-laced cigar smoke. On the other side, ostensibly, in a sprawling concrete jungle breaking under the weight of deforestation, is an army of dead-broke and dreadlocked drones wearing uniformly dark colors and black Nike boots. But something unites both scowling sides in their days of monotonous gluttony and chronic displeasure, and that's the fact that no one fucking smiles...ever.

"The funny thing about DC," says Wale, "is that 90 percent of the negative connotations that we got are true."

DC is the only city in the country without congressional representation. In the city where decisions are made, no one from the urban center of nearly 600,000 residents is in the halls of power to place two cents. Elected officials allegedly come to the city to make positive changes, but their focus is primarily on neighborhoods in far-off lands and not the nearby blocks they drive through to get to work. The very same streets that invented the phrase "murder capitol." America's capitol may exist as a signature of Western prosperity, but the city itself is the visual definition of this country's fucked-up distribution of wealth. Thousands of dollars manicure the lawns of the Washington Monument, but just a few steps away, people are scrapping for change. It doesn't take A Clockwork Orange's suspension of disbelief to see DC's hell.

But here's the thing: Wale smiles. Onstage with Mark Ronson, rapping the part of the late, great Ol' Dirty Bastard over a cover of Britney Spears' "Toxic," Wale's grin is ear to ear. He smiles during coordinated clapping with the lead singer of Phantom Planet as Ronson plays to a sold-out and unusually gushing LA crowd. Hell, Wale even rapped on the official remix of a song called "Smile" with a snarky, cute British girl fond of vintage dresses and crude adorableness.

He has reasons, certainly. Few unsigned rappers have been able to generate the buzz and connections young Wale has garnered. Of course, Wale is signed to a production deal with Ronson's Allido Records and a pretty slick management deal, lacking only the inevitable record deal, but those allegiances are for later in the story. See, because Wale is a slick fucking rapper. Co-founder and co-owner of Allido Records Rich Kleiman says that Wale's "versatility and fearlessness" are his best assets, and that's pretty much on point. He's not worried about what he can't do because he feels like he can do everything. Whether he's rapping at breakneck speeds over Freeway's "Big Spender" or slapping punch lines all over the Justice track, the MC's varied cadence—from track to track or even bar to bar—is absolutely thrilling. He can rip shod right through a verse with his head down or fill in the tiniest cracks of complex productions with equal charm.

And in this increasingly street-rap-phobic world, Wale's rhymes manage to skirt the overblown pulpit of "conscious rap" without placing a soapbox of evil on the dope-boy corner.

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