Honey Mag

Wale’s got a thing for chicks who rock Air Max. He’s distracted by one as we’re setting up for the first shot of the day. L.A.’s breezy, blue expanse serves as his backdrop.

“Hey,” he shouts as she’s passing. “I like your sneakers.”

A middle-aged white woman in a floppy, white sunbonnet jogs by blazing some purple Nikes. She looks back to check out her suitor, chokes out a nervous chuckle, and picks up her speed. We all fall out laughing. Then the collective gaze shifts back to the 24-year-old rapper’s own feet. He’s wearing the same pair. And yes, they’re purple, too.

Wale is that dude.

Funny and fashionable — the DC emcee gets as much credit for his kicks as his punchlines. Right now, just days from his album drop date, Wale is in set position at the starting block. Even though he’s been here before — five times to be exact — this is his major label debut moment. Attention: Deficit is his opus in legitimacy. His Olympic dive into the mainstream. He may have yoked up a grip of fans with every mixtape he leaked along the way (from Mixtape About Nothing to Back To The Feature), but releasing a Roc Nation project (and a single featuring pop parfait Lady Gaga) is an entirely different endeavor.

Wale is a complex character. It seems that almost everything he reveals to Honey competes with popular perception. He has a rep for being a cocky dude. Well, that guy is nowhere to be found during our time together. The subject of our photo shoot is modest — more uncertain than insecure. Even poised on the apex of his career, with infinite industry cosigns and a major label push, he’s anxious, not confident.

“This is my biography,” Wale says of Attention: Deficit, which leaked a couple of weeks before it’s official date. “It’s honest. Raw emotion. It’s close to me. That’s why part of me will be a little offended if it doesn’t get heard. I don’t want people to take lack of sales as me taking a hit. This is something different. My label is letting me put out an album with a single that released seven months ago. We’re not going for first week sales. We’re only shipping out 30,000 of them. We’re going for that grind. We’re showing people that you can build a fan base the old fashioned way.”

Wale is knee-deep in the digital age. A couple of his peers are doing laps but he gets it.

“I’ve got work to do before I can even catch up to Cudi and Drake,” he admits. “They’ve progressed a little bit quicker than I have. I worked twice as hard because I wasn’t fortunate enough to be under a successful rapper to inherit some of their fan base. I had to work for it all and my city had to hold me down.”

Wale may have DC on lock and the Internet all a-twitter, but he’s more anxious to attract some estrogen to his audience. His latest effort is a damn good stab at the panties. He’s got that whole spoken-word thing going on, and an affinity for meaty metaphors and cipher-worthy similes. Almost every track on the album is as likely to show up on your favorite rapper’s Most Played list as it is your YSL-worshipping homegirl’s. And somehow, it never feels forced.

“I think people try too hard to market to females,” says Wale. “They insult their intelligence. I feel like there are going to be a lot of females who miss out on some great music on my album just because I wasn’t a huge radio artist.”

Not if we have anything to do with it. The records speak for themselves. It’s not about slipping in a random “respect” anthem or sticky-sweet hook — he actually talks to us sans condescension. And though his female-friendly tracks may garner gallons of groupie love, it’s a different type of chick that gets Wale’s attention. No deficit there.

“It’s about the intangibles in 2010,” he says. “The superficial shit is cool — like, yeah she can fuck, or she got a big butt. That’s the x-factor. We’re not going to have sex 24/7 so we need to be friends. I want a girl who you could hijack all her extra artificial cosmetics for a week and not even notice. Somebody who’s smart and can stimulate me mentally because when you on the road it’s not like you can look at ‘em or touch ‘em. I can’t stand girls who don’t challenge their intellect. It don’t hurt if she can sing a little bit.”

Wait, could it be? A witty reference to his rumored industry crush? The blogs have been buzzing about a relationship between him and Solange for months. The infamous Central Park picnic pics. Their flirty (and very public) tweets don’t do much to hinder the gossip, either. Back in the telly, we get a glimpse of another side of Wale. (Truth serum comes in many forms and flavors.)

“I do love her,” he admits of Solange, flashing a Cheshire. “We’re friends. She’s amazing. She’s a good person. Any single mother contributing to society the way she does — I got a lot of love for them. She’s got to do a lot on her own and raise a young black man in this day and age, so my hat goes off to her. She’s definitely an anomaly. And the way she can do that and manage to do the same things that I complain about having to do.”

His affection is as obvious as a set of flushed cheeks. And impossibly adorable. Wale, the former mixtape rapper from inner city DC, is borderline giddy.

“Did you interview Solange about me?” Wale asks. He’s sprawled across his bed; head practically buried in the pillow. “Did she smile when you mentioned my name?”

Wale is dead ass. But not in a corny, love sick pit-bull way. His honesty is endearing. Wale insists that he and Solange are just friends but it didn’t take a crowbar to pry his desires out of him. He stops singing MGMT’s “Electric Feel” long enough to address his future.

“It would be nice to settle down,” Wale says. “I wish that was coming soon. I’ve done a lot, man. I have no interest in accidentally getting a groupie pregnant, I’ll tell you that much. I don’t want to be the 50-year-old pops. I wanna be like, Yo, I’m bout to take off tour, go fly to see the wife, the girl, the kids or whatever I got, then come back to this bullshit-ass lifestyle with all these fair-weather friends. It’s about real love.”

(Yeah, we’re fans. And we’re not talking about Mary J.)

Photography by Cameron Krone
Styling by Charles Wade