The Daily Orange sat down with Wale after the show to talk about his style and influences.

DO: Could you talk a little bit about how go-go has affected your whole life and how that’s influenced the new album?

The new album is basically just like life. ‘Attention Deficit’ is almost like a metaphor for life. And I might sound like crazy pretentious, but whatever you’re doing at 7:20 on April Fools’ Day is not what you’ll be doing at 7:20 on April 2. Let’s say April 1 is track one and April 2 is track two; Two completely different things. Essentially one would think that’s ADD, because you try to put it in a 45 minute span. It’s like ‘OK, wait. It’s all over the place,’ but it’s not because it’s three days different. The album is like fingerprints, they could look the same, but they’re not. They’re all different.

ADD is the concept of the album, of what is the lack of attention that needs to be put on the good side of hip-hop. People focus on the bad side – the good messages they don’t focus on. The ignorance they focus on. That’s why they say it’s dying, it’s this or it’s that. The creativity they don’t focus on. Auto-tune they focus on.

But there’s other stuff – listen to K’Naan’s record, you know what I’m saying? Listen to Nas’ last album. It’s definitely alive and kicking. But if you focus on specific titles, it would seem overdone. And to answer the other question, go-go is something I want to do later, because I’ve kind of presented it enough at this point, so go-go’s something I’ll give to you at the live show. I’ll be blogging a lot more about it when the album comes out. It’s gonna be 100 percent golden.

DO: It’s interesting that you have these kind of preconceived ideas that ‘this is this phase, this is that phase,’ especially in the ‘Mixtape About Nothing,’ like your titles are funny, they’re so self-conscious, like this is the heavy feature song, this is the cliché song with Lil Wayne, so was that intentional to be like ‘I know where I am.’

It’s all understandable, like I told the other two, the Pitchfork review of ‘Chillin’ was a 5, but if you read it, they get it. It’s my introduction to the public. It’s my introduction to the people who are not familiar with me. It’s information, this is the age of information, so a lot of people are fortunate enough to be motivated to find out what’s new. But there’s millions of people that aren’t. It’s my introduction to those people, like ‘Hey, I’m Wale, you might not have heard of me, but somebody you know knows who I am.’ That’s why they’re like ‘Well, he says his name nine times, it’s a real glossy, pop-y record.’ And I understand that.

I understand that a lot of artists take themselves so seriously, they’re caught in a matrix they don’t know – like she said, you know what phase you’re in – because you have to know. The great ones know. And I hope to one day be great. I know exactly what’s going on and where I’m doing it. Like even this tour right now, I’m making nothing, I’m losing, I’m in the hole 25K on the tour. And I’m telling you that so you know. I’ve toured the whole country, but now it’s like, ‘Attention Deficit’ time. I have to spread the word. By any means necessary I have to spread the word. If that means touring with a band and I can barely afford it, so be it. Because it’s a message. You gotta let people know that I’m here and I care about the culture. Hopefully I can win over enough fans to be relevant and to make the album I would like to make further down the road and keep this thing going. Break from the monotony of things that you’re paying attention to that you shouldn’t be.

Published on April 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm