Arguably the most buzzed-about rapper to emerge out of the blogosphere’s tower of babble, he’s acutely aware that to achieve commercial success outside of the Internet bubble, he needs a radio hit. But as he readily admits, “I’m not a radio artist yet.” So in a bid to earn visibility, he collaborated with Lady Gaga and Gucci Mane for his first two singles, alienating many of the purists in his vociferous fan base.
Compounding the disappointment was that neither cut caught fire, though the Gaga-aided “Chillin” has nearly gone gold. Moreover, “Attention Deficit” is riddled with commercial compromises that were absent on the free giveaways he made his name on: the outstanding “100 Miles and Running” and the “The Mixtape About Nothing,” a “Seinfeld”-themed opus that shifted people’s paradigm of what to expect from a mix tape. But in spite of the myriad hoops that the corporate brass forced him to jump through, Wale has delivered the strongest debut yet of XXL’s much ballyhooed Freshman 10 class (Kid Cudi, Asher Roth, Charles Hamilton, et al), one that augurs well for a lengthy and successful career.
