This week marks the culmination of Wale's Seinfeld-referencing release series, with The Album About Nothing impacting after a long wait between it and preceding tapes The Mixtape About Nothing and More About Nothing. To celebrate this, we're throwing it back to 2008 with "The Artistic Integrity," a cut from that first tape.
Featuring some surefire hallmarks of an early Wale song -- a Seinfeld dialog sample and go-go-style live drums -- this track had the D.C. native meditating on fame and its results on music. As he's progressed quite a bit in terms of popularity and sound in the seven years that followed this track, it's interesting to look back and apply his words to his own career.
Quotable Lyrics
When life gets sour know I still devour
I remember Peabody mice crawling up the shower
Now it's motorbikes, warm nights out in Maui
And white bitches and light skinned women be smilin'
DC star, a PG legend
MoCo phenomenon holmes I'm all of it
Yeah, they all love it though critique Jon Lovitz
And whack hoes hatin' on key out in public