"The underground just spun around and did a 360!" When Eminem spit this rhyme in 2000 on The Marshall Mathers LP, he was, as usual, talking about himself, but I imagine the line must sound depressingly prophetic to circa-2008 underground rappers surveying the last eight years. In a strikingly short time, all of the mutually understood rules of independent rap's mid-to-late-90s golden age have been overturned, rendered obsolete by a combination of shifting critical opinion and the democratizing bulldozer of the internet, and indie-rappers have been struggling to gain footing in their bewildering new landscape ever since. Criticizing mainstream hip-hop's misogyny, violence, and materialism, for instance, once meant approving, pat-on-the-head reviews from mainstream rock publications like Rolling Stone and SPIN. These days, it is the quickest route to being derided as a self-righteous "backpack rapper," a term that has soured into a reflexive sneer.
In short, things just ain't the same for (non)gangstas, and any rapper who finds himself uncomfortable inventing a storied criminal past has learned to step carefully. D.C. rapper Wale (pronounced Wah-LAY, as he carefully points out early on) is all too aware of these potential pitfalls, and on his expertly crafted, exuberantly witty, and endlessly surprising new Mixtape About Nothing, he makes an art out of high-stepping lightly through a minefield. "An iPod mind to you Walkman guys," he calls himself at one point, and the adeptness of the rhyme matches the neatness of the distinction. Throughout the tape, Wale displays an almost Road Runner-like ability to evade classification. "I ain't a street nigga, but my niggas is some," he rhymes on "The End Credits", adding later, "I'm not a Muslim; my grandmomma was one." He likens stylistic comparisons to Lil Wayne and Lupe Fiasco to being "locked in a box," lamenting, "We apples and oranges, but everybody pair us." The endless self-positioning might seem obsessive, but Wale instinctively understands that categorization means the death of a three-dimensional personality, and he is determined not to be easily dismissed.
He has succeeded. On The Mixtape About Nothing, Wale emerges fully-formed as a rapper and as a thinker, a lightning-witted, irreverent guy blessed with both an infectious swagger and a sound moral compass-- twin gifts that enable him to accomplish some of the mixtape's most audacious feats. The central conceit, for example, might read on paper like nothing more than white-boy bait: as the title suggests, it's an album-length riff on Seinfeld that incorporates snippets of dialogue from famous episodes and features an endearingly goofy "drop" by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss ("Don't you think my kids are gonna think I'm so cool that I'm on this mixtape?? Mothafucka!!") But Wale's genuine love for the show rescues the venture from drowning in cheap irony. On the disarmingly earnest love song "The Grown Up", after Wale confesses, "I gotta be a man before I can become a father," the voices of George Constanza and Jerry weigh in like some Manhattanite take on the Greek chorus: "We're like children! We're not men! We find all these stupid little reasons to break up with these women!" The slyly perceptive joke-- that men of all classes and races shrink equally fearfully from the demands of adulthood-- only hints at the sort of unexpected emotional resonance Wale manages to mine from his unlikely setup.
Indeed, by effortlessly flipping this source material, Wale proves that there is almost no topic he can't handle. Rapping in a blaring voice oddly reminiscent of Rich Boy, he comes across equally funny and engaging complaining about Soundscan, illegal downloads, and "ringtone rappers" as he does while gleefully comparing his bank account to "brunch at a synagogue." When he tackles trickier issues-- mainstream hip-hop's prevailing misogyny and violence, for instance-- he demonstrates an uncanny knack for seeing all sides of the argument without losing his footing.
On the masterful "The Manipulation", he flips with frightening and instructive ease between unctuous, Common-style lover-man and the vilest Pimp C-style misogynist. "The Kramer", meanwhile, builds from the still-sickening audio of Michael Richards screaming racial epithets at nightclub patrons into the most thoughtful examination of the insoluble problem of the prevalence of the word "nigga" in rap music in years. "A nigga write 'nigga' in his lyric/ Expects a white boy to omit it/ The white boy spit it like he spit it/ Recite it to his friends-- who by the way, ain't niggas." The white friends "incorporate the lyric into their everyday living," until a black friend eventually overhears them. He lets it slide-- "it's so insignificant and little"-- and soon: "The things they say went a little too far/ He couldn't tell the difference between 'a' or '-er'/ So they just kept saying 'nigga' to his face/ There's nothing he can do/ He let it get away/ It came to the point he couldn't look them in the face."
No matter Wale's tone-- sternly critical or goofy, reflective or boastful-- the coursing music maintains a joyful momentum. Most of the original beats on the tape come from the D.C. production collective Best Kept Secret, who punctuate straightforward throwback-rap tracks with rattling bongos and woodblocks borrowed from D.C.'s go-go scene. But, just to show us he can, Wale also runs circles around the Roots' "Star" beat, the "Roc Boys" instrumental, and Shawty Redd-style synthesizers alongside Lil Wayne on "The Cliché Lil Wayne Feature". Wale is fully aware of his potential-- "Hip hop heads see a new day, and I is one," he proclaims near the end of the tape-- but he also squirms away from coronation as the next great hope, a label as constricting as any other. "You see, kings get killed, or at least overthrown," he notes on "The Vacation From Ourselves". His "mixtape about nothing" is really a mixtape about almost everything, and with it Wale has produced one of the year's most improbable and inspiring successes.
