SOUNDTRACK: WALE-Tiny Desk Concert #935/Tiny Desk Fest October 30, 2019 (January 21, 2020).
This Tiny Desk concert was part of Tiny Desk Fest, a four-night series of extended concerts performed in front of a live audience and streamed live on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Back in October, NPR allowed fans to come watch some Tiny Desk Concerts live. October 30th was rap night featuring Wale.
Washington D.C. rapper Wale stands as one of the most distinctive figures in hip-hop today. More than 10 years ago, the man born Olubowale Victor Akintimehin created a local buzz in the D.C. area through a host of mixtapes showcasing his skills atop popular instrumentals. What separated him from the hundreds of hopeful MCs trying to make names for themselves online was his ability to fuse go-go music — D.C.’s homegrown spin on funk — with hip-hop.
I’m always amazed when I have never heard of someone who is objectively huge. So Wale (whose name I didn’t know how to pronounce until he said it) is a hugely popular rapper.
In 2011, Wale joined forces with Rick Ross and his Maybach Music Group and had a real breakout with “Lotus Flower Bomb,” the lead single from his sophomore album, Ambition. It went on to earn him a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song in 2013.
A native of the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area (or DMV), Wale’s calling card remains the rap ballad, a streak he continued on his 2019 album, Wow… That’s Crazy, which debuted at No. 7 on Billboard’s Top 200. It reveals a man more self-aware than ever, exposing flaws and struggles while keeping his self confidence fully intact.
One of the things I really like about Tiny Desk is hearing rappers performer with a live band. In this case, the band is
Tre And The Ppl (formerly UCB). Tre is Wale’s right hand on stage and their effortless chemistry has been intact since the beginning.
Tre was founder of the go-go band UCB which almost succeeded in “introducing go-go’s hyper-local rhythms to the rest of the planet.”
Tre sings mostly choruses but some leads to Wale’s rapping. And Tre sounds just like Aziz Ansari when he sings. I guess Tom Haverford would have supported UCB back in the day.
What really struck me about Wale was his frankly astonishing ego for someone who is somewhat understated. Things like
This is a big stage but luckily I’m a giant as well.
and
I’m at an important place in my career … and I got here because of this city.
He is full of love for D.C. (“don’t mute D.C.” he says at the end). And when he introduces
“Lotus Flower Bomb” he says, “Have you heard of this before? If you haven’t, you can leave now.” He’s very funny, making amusing mellow jokes throughout the show.
This song is really pretty with gentle keyboards from Glenn Cobb and some quiet guitar licks from Stanley Thompson.
Wale asks, “Are you all allowed to clap in here? I saw Lizzo got you clappin'”
“LoveHate Thing” has a cool five-string bass line from Daniel Bennet that jumps to a funky middle section. I love the addition of the percussion from Jerry Venable throughout all the songs.
Wale shouts out to D.C. and says, “I hope the Nationals win tonight.” (They won the world series that evening).
He says he wants to introduce “some of my b sides.” The song “CC White” [Cocaine White] is “written in metaphor about something that plagued this city since the 80s.”
As the song starts he holds up a little Washington D.C. flag that he wants to “put here for aesthetics.” The little flag won’t stand up after several tries. He says, “I knew that wasn’t going to fit … that was a gag by the way.”
He takes a sip of tea and then says “how many of you think that’s tea in there?”
Up next is “Sexy Lady” which is sung by Tre and which Wale says “is one of the classic songs that came out in any genre.” Tre encourages everyone to “feel free to dance if you want to. Feel free to get close to each other if you want to.” People sing along right from the start. I enjoyed the dirty but not lyric
“I’m gonna pick you up on Saturday, maybe you can give me some whats her name.”
For this show, Wale gets more than three tracks, He gets six, in fact. The second to last song is “Sue Me” which he says “is special to me. I feel like I’m a next level person when I get to the last verse.” I was pretty fascinated by his lyrics
Maybe ’cause I was searchin’, I found me the perfect person
But me and her didn’t work out, she buried what she worked for
And I carried the bitterness of a kola nut
Nigerian shit, my parents never showed much
Womanizer, probably could’ve been a feminist
‘Cause I respect ’em, but Lord, I got polygamy problems
But it’s the chorus that is so nice:
Sue me, l’m rootin’ for everybody that’s black
He also says “pro-black isn’t anti-white” which a lot of people forget.
There’s some cool guitar and keyboard soloing in this song some cool soloing. And I like the open hi-hat sound that Eric Curry uses on this song and some others.
He ends the set by saying, “I got one of the biggest songs in the country right now so let’s get into it.” Again, I’ve never heard of it, I guess the music world is horribly siloed. Before the song starts he thanks the audience for their energy:
It’s not like a show live crazy turnt up energy. It’s more like a I gotta get to work in the morning, I’m not as turnt up as you. And maybe like some of my superiors are watching me so… shout out to everybody with a Finsta who can show they here
For “On Chill” he encourages everyone “You ain’t gonna get in trouble for clapping for yourself.”
Wale really won me over by the end of this set. I went from never having heard of him, to hoping for more success for him. And I’m not the only older white guy to feel that way.
Wale‘s Seinfeld-inspired The Album About Nothing an extension of his 2008 The Mixtape About Nothing, marks the first time the comedian has featured on a Number One album. You can hear about the 60-year-old comic’s unlikely friendship with the 30-year-old rapper and what attracted him to the Wale’s music in this NPR interview.
[READ: January 26, 2020] “You Will Never Be Forgotten”
This story starts out in a shocking way: “The rapist is such an inspiraton that he started a newsletter to share his story.”
I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
The rapist chronicles his transformation from a nerdy ducking into the muscular entrepreneur swan he is today.
It turns out this newsletter began “as a motivational tool for his annual charity triathlon” but it is now a meditation on health, tech culture and “of course, pushing through limitations and not understanding the meaning of the word ‘no.'”
Then we see the whole story: “the woman has been following the rapist on social media since the rape, though her accounts don’t officially ‘follow’ the rapist.”
I love that the story doesn’t let up on calling him what he is.
But I also loved that the story is about more than this. For the woman works as a content moderator at the world’s most popular search engine, in a room with no windows or ventilation system.
Since I don’t know anything about Google I will choose to believe that the description of this job is true. Her job, along with the other people whose names include BabyJesusUpchuck and Cunty is to eliminate hate speech, torture, pornography both adult and child, horrific traffic accidents and executions carried out by terrorists. The others all have second jobs because they cannot unionize .
The story jumps between the woman Wollongong the rapist in real life and then her getting desensitized by the horrors that she sees every minute of her job.
The woman is disappointed to see that the rapist has a friendly dog.
The rapist’s newsletters are inspirational. He hates selfies “more people have died this year from taking selfies than from shark attacks …the reason I don’t take selfies is the reason I refuse to use fitness trackers. if you’re fixated on monitoring your heart rate, you forget to listen to the beating of your heart.”
Later when the man posts a picture of his dinner, the woman wonders if this counts as a selfie.
The latest crisis at work is the entity known as I AM ASS, an elite band of hackers –propagandists, and disinformation trolls, who have turned a fake incident of police brutality into a real one. They spit racist misogynistic babble wherever they can.
The woman is only comforted about the rapist because she sees “he’s not getting any ass, lowercase.” But that changes when she watches him escort a woman back home. Rapes that occur after her rape are her fault, she feels.
She follows up to his room and finds that he keeps his key under the doormat “because the rapist never feels the need to worry about someone assaulting him.”
The rapist’s girlfriend is hot and confirms online (its not real until it’s on the internet) that they are now exclusive. The rapist’s girlfriend started an app called Tender Buttons which instructs the user to do a ritual with a stranger “attempt handstands with Nancy in Golden Gate Park” as a way to bring people together.
The woman understands why the rapist raped her and presumably didn’t rape the rapist’s girlfriend because the rapist’s girlfriend is cool and, pre-rape, the woman was ordinary, not cool. The rapist’s girlfriend and the woman would possibly have been friends if they didn’t have the rapist in common.
When the rapist and the rapist’s girlfriend have been together for six months, they celebrate at a fancy restaurant and the woman is there too. When the rapist’s girlfriend goes in to the bathroom, the woman follows her and tells her that someone raped her because of her app. Then she said, what if i told you the guy you are with was the one who raped me. It doesn’t go very well.
The woman realizes that she is more or less trapped in the bathroom now because if she leaves the two of them will no doubt see her
But she must be brave. She must have a new plan. One that might make her an online sensation who the people she works with will have to watch out for.
There is so much going on in this story and aside from the fundamental pain that the story explores, I found it really rewarding and I really liked South’s writing style.
I Just Read About That... 
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