Videos by According2HipHop
Wale did his best Soulja Boy impression this week while discussing one of latest music sensations.
In a sit down with Cam Newton, the DMV rapper spoke candidly about how Atlantic Records failed to back his early efforts to fuse Afrobeats into his sound.Long before the genre became a festival staple and global chart force, Wale says he was already pushing the vision—but his label wasn’t trying to hear it.
“When I was on Atlantic Records, they didn’t want me to do no afro music,” he told Cam. “I was doing it—they just wasn’t promoting it or nothing. They didn’t want to expand. So the opportunities that I had to enter those markets, they were just focused on other records that I had.”
Wale, born to Nigerian immigrant parents and raised in D.C., has long infused his heritage into his music, whether the label embraced it or not. Songs like “My Love” featuring Major Lazer and WizKid hinted at the direction he wanted to go. But admittedly, he soon realized the label wasn’t built to support the kind of cultural crossover he had in mind.
“They never seen a kid of Nigerian immigrants that’s born in America be a rapper,” he added. “So it’s a whole lot of things that make me unique, but I think it’s made things a little more difficult. Maybe I wasn’t as palatable to the mainstream when I first came out.”
Now that artists like Burna Boy, WizKid, and Tems are dominating charts and selling out arenas, Wale’s reflections sting a bit deeper. It’s not just that the industry slept—it’s that they had the chance to be early and chose not to bet on him.
The conversation around Wale’s place in the culture was reignited recently after a viral moment with Twitch megastar Kai Cenat.
The two struck up a casual convo after meeting at the BET Awards. But when Kai returned to his livestream, he admitted he had no idea who he had just spoken to. Later that night, Wale pulled up on Kai during a sit-down interview with Snoop Dogg, whispering to the streamer mid-show:
“That s—t making me look crazy now, just so you know. That’s making me look crazy, the exchange we had in the hallway. I mean, they running with it, but we’ll talk later.”
The clip instantly went viral, sparking conversations online about Wale’s visibility and the industry’s long-running failure to properly celebrate his career.
While he may have missed his moment in the Afrobeats spotlight, Wale is stepping back into the fold on his own terms—with a new project on the way and plenty to say. If the industry didn’t get it back then, they might want to start paying attention now.
