Been listening to the new — well, five days old, I suppose; almost ancient these days; more on that in a moment — Wale mixtape. It’s a complex thing: he’s evolving into a pop star but he’s still a lyricist; he’s materialistic but subversive; he’s international and cosmopolitan but rooted in his beloved DC. And he’s having fun getting the peanut butter mixed in with the chocolate. The song with K’Naan, a great pairing, implicitly compares Wale moving to Maryland from D.C. to K’Naan moving to the U.S. from Somalia. I suppose that ever since he rapped over that Justice track I can’t stand, it’s no longer noteworthy that Wale moves beyond genres. But Back To The Feature still feels like an expansion of his boundaries, especially as he works through his status anxiety — he’s part of XXL‘s 2009 Freshman Class, so expectations are high, but it’s June and the mixtape still hasn’t come out, even though he’s been on tour forever and now he has this Roc Nation deal and look at all the high-profile guest appearances on the tape and don’t think that means he’s commercial but would it be so bad if he was and D.C. is looking to him and even Obama isn’t under this much pressure — and comes out with a worthy offering. (The more-pressure-than-Obama reference is really an actual lyric, absurd as it is.) There’s a reason why the line Lady GaGa sings on his monster single is about how everyone’s looking at him and they won’t stop.

And what’s wrong with being self-centered? Wale’s being honest. The internet is full of people who want to hear him address this stuff anyway. Wale is less rapping than he is blogging, which is one of the reasons that he’s less hostile to bloggers than your typical rapper. (Though not un-hostile.  That Obama-pressure lyric is his response to the scrutiny of the blogosphere.) If he doesn’t have new material out constantly he feels like he’s old news, and when he gives the excuse that he’s been "to like 70 cities in 5 days" it sounds like he knows that it’s not going to be a compelling argument given the expectations that people set for him and he’s set for himself. Speaking of which, I should really write a post about, like, national security, given that it’s about a quarter to 9, but it’s especially funny to see Wale complaining about people unfollowing him on Twitter or agonizing over asking Jean Grae over Twitter to give him a guest verse because if she doesn’t reply "in like 20 minutes" people are going to start laughing at him for being stood up "and say why don’t you get Lady GaGa on the tape."

Anyway: listen.