Wale and Kid Cudi are only a few years into their careers, but their relationship is already shaping up to be an epic saga. The two rappers became friends back in 2009, sharing an XXL Freshman cover, and even linking up for a classic collaboration, "Is There Any Love."
That song title took on a whole new meaning when things between Wale and Cudi went sour. Their issues first went public with Cudi's explosive Complex interview, in which he dissed Wale and birthed the meme, "We don't fuck with you musically." To make matters worse, both rappers were struggling with different challenges at the time of their falling out. For Wale, the challenge came in the form of a commercially disappointing debut album, Attention Deficit. Cudi's challenges were more personal: rumors of drug abuse and an arrest for possession of liquid cocaine.
Since then Cudi's gotten clean and dropped his sophomore album, Man on The Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. Meanwhile Wale's turned his career around, signing with Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group and releasing the well-received Self Made Vol. 1along with his MMG brethren. Best of all, Cudi and Wale managed to put their differences aside and collaborate on Wale’s new song, “Focused.”
Wale first told Complex about the record months ago—"[Cudi] recorded it from his iPhone," he explained, "Ross’ producer mixed it down, and it sounds like a real song." Just last week we were able to debut the CDQ version. With Folarin's sophmore album, Ambition, set to drop November 1 (peep the tracklist here), we got on the phone with Mr. No Days off to talk about the making of Ambition and the importance of patching things up with Mr. Rager.
As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin)
Wale on the making of "Focused"...
“This was one of the first songs recorded for the album. The song stands for something. The album’s called Ambition, and it stands for the younger guys wanting more, working harder, and getting through things.
Wale on re-connecting with Kid Cudi...
“With an album like Ambitionand the way I wrote it, it was only right to take something that was so public and so personal and put it on here. It took a lot for it to go down. When you’re that close to somebody and your friendship takes a turn, it’s really hard to repair.
Wale on his upcoming album, Ambition...
“The defining moment of my career will be Ambition.. [The album] is complete and I have every intention of making this a classic album. I was telling Drake the other day, a lot of the people that came before us worked a lot harder and things didn’t come as easy to them.
