Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

In today’s Hip Hop game and in the overall mental scheme of African American males and their particular mentality, it has become more acceptable to come off as hard or maintain some type of thuggish nature.

Emotions have become obsolete and almost devoid for some of the youth as many young Black men are unwilling to wear their emotions on a sleeve and choose to bury themselves in emotion instead of using necessary outlets to let them out.

Hip Hop music now isn’t heavily stressed on emotion and has shifted to a point where one would think that everybody is having a grand time, even with the crisis’ plaguing society.

With the release of Attention Deficit, Wale almost makes it a mission to bring the troubles of the world, or at least his world, out into the open for all to see.  Whether it be happiness or sadness, triumph or tragedy, he attempts to cover it all.

While speaking with Associated Press, the rapper elaborated on the premise of his first outing on a major release and how it is infused with emotion. 

“My album is 100% about emotion; about feeling imperfect, about feeling like the world is on your shoulders, about feeling good about yourself, feeling great or feeling like the underdog.  It’s all those emotions.”

Notable tracks such as “Shades” and “Diary” relate to dealing with one’s imperfections and becoming comfortable with their own identity in a world where differences are penned as being something wrong.

“Triumph” and “Beautiful Bliss”, however, show the other side of the fence and the fact that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how deep and dark it may be.

The D.C. representative also spoke on the necessity of women on his album and the fact that their ability to deal with such an array of emotions only made them a necessity when it came to placing singers as features for his debut.

“My songs are about concentrated emotions.  What that means is basically this song is all about being happy, that’s it.  This song is about things being bad, but not that bad.  This song is all about winning, triumphing.  I think women get the emotion across with less effort than men do because their more emotional creatures.” 

As the world continues to turn and the bottom is so much closer to the top nowadays, some African American males must come to grips with the fact that everything isn’t hardcore.  Playing a particular position in order to appease your peers is only detrimental to yourself.  There’s never anything wrong with expression, life is an everyday problem.