Recently, Wale celebrated his baby girl's first birthday. The rapper shared some of the festivities with social media, specifically, there's a video he shared on his Instagram where we get to see his one-year old daughter, Zyla Moon, playing around with cash money. The video itself is innocent enough and the caption on it reads, "my fine girl at her bday party, the [Nigerian] way."
Still, leave it to the internet to turn something good-natured and fun into something salty. Apparently the internets wasn't too impressed with Wale showering his girl with bills, a Nigerian tradition referred to as spraying.
Some of the comments left on Wale's IG video purport that he's 'making it rain' on his daughter, thus emboldening her to strip later in life. "Make it rain on your daughter. Respect," one user commented, while another wrote, "She's just a cute lil baby..there are well many other things she could have celebrated with, not $$..she doesn't even know what it is. This are why they call us blacks." Yet another user commented, "Great job teaching your kids value 👍🏽."
These comments drove Zyla's aunt to reply on Instagram, writing, "Zyla moon is my niece, she's a very special, intelligent, charismatic, and sweet one year old. Her mother would never let her be subject to anything harmful or degrading in any way. Spraying/pining/ showering ppl with money on their birthday is a Nigerian custom and We celebrate her Nigerian heritage by maintaining these custom. She is healthy, safe, and very well taken care of."
Even so, Wale had to hop on twitter to shed some light for those unaware of the cultural tradition, "Oluwakemi is Nigerian and we sprayed her on her birthday ..some of y'all poppin off in the comments realize the world is bigger than ur home," he tweeted.