How Wale Built A Career Before Monetization Was Even The Plan

Wale at the BET Awards 2025 held at the Peacock Theater on June 09, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)

Billboard via Getty Images

In an industry that rewards speed and spectacle, Wale’s return demonstrates how slowing down and deepening the art can strengthen both cultural relevance and catalog longevity.

We are now in an era where rising artists enter the industry armed with branding strategies, monetization funnels, and rollout plans before they’ve even built a catalog. Wale, however, comes from a time when the work itself was the commodity.

Wale emerged at the height of the backpack era, an era defined by mixtapes, blog features, lyrical miracles, and creative experimentation rather than algorithm metrics or sponsored content. This was the late-2000s moment when the digital underground took form, and artists were validated not through streaming analytics but through co-signs, freestyle sessions, and the culturally impactful projects.

Wale’s debut mixtapes, including 2005’s Paint A Picture and 2007’s 100 Miles & Running, positioned him as one of the leading voices of the backpack generation. Before the industry was fixed on going viral, it demanded bars, originality, and conceptual depth, and Wale excelled in all three.

Despite being imbued as a professional rapper almost twenty years since his debut mixtape, the Nigerian-DMV native still abides by the philosophy of art first, everything else later.

Sitting inside the Def Jam office this summer, I asked the “Where to Start” artist (a track that pays homage to SWV as he samples their classic “I’m So Into You”) when he first began thinking about music as a “career.” He admitted he didn’t think about it in those terms at all. “I didn’t even think of it like that. I was just more so like this is my job now,” he says. “This is what I do… and I always just wanted to keep getting better. It was just really art over everything to break it down.”

As of 2025, new artists are expected to be content creators and influencers simultaneously, but his entry point was rather narrow, with a fixation to make the music, refine the creation, and be confident in the growth potential of his works. There was not necessarily an obsession with “blowing up” per say, but more over to show off his rap skills and creativity. This is the traditional approach most musicians have taken on and hence the fruition of timeless music.

“I wasn’t even thinking about it in the business sense yet,” said Wale. “At that point, I was just like, this is art. This is what’s next. This is after that. This is what’s after that.” It was not his forte to project a five-year goal or chase any market trends, but rather a curation of depth. For most artists, this approach would be considered a risk. For him, it became the foundation of longevity.

For an artist of Wale’s caliber, it was understood that attractive creativity alongside depth would lead to scale.

“The main thing that I was trying to do was just grow the fan base for real,” he explains. “I didn’t even really think… to monetize at all, till probably way, way, way later. I was just like it’s growing and it’s happening. I can feel the energy. Let’s just build it. And then everything else gonna fall into place.”

Wale’s commercial breakthrough accelerated with the success of “Pretty Girls” and later the Grammy-nominated “Lotus Flower Bomb” featuring Miguel, two singles that scaled far beyond his backpack-era foundation and positioned him as a viable mainstream act. His 2011 signing to Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group further expanded his market presence, shifting him from a backpack-era standout into a nationally visible artist and certified touring leverage.

The move immediately translated into industry recognition, including a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song, a BET Award for Best Collaboration, and multiple BET Hip-Hop Awards nominations as his profile expanded. At this juncture, there was no denial of the existence of a Wale fanbase. As streaming overtook the mixtape, his catalog maintained active play with “Lotus Flower Bomb” and “Bad” each generating hundreds of millions of streams and serving as persisting performers across digital service providers.

Works including The Gifted and The Album About Nothing also maintained consistent consumption, which was telling of both Wale’s brand durability and fan-base retention in a market where many artists struggle to maintain long-term engagement in the digital world.

The climb wasn’t just cultural, structure was involved. In a hyper-saturated music landscape filled with thousands of new artists emerging every year, legacy becomes hard for audiences to track. “A lot of my lore is blurry to people because it’s a million artists every year that come out,” he says. “There’s so much… too much of everything. A lot of people don’t know what I’ve done or my contribution to the game.”

That oversaturation creates a paradox. The very ecosystem that allows artists to distribute independently also buries their history. Yet his response to the latter isn’t frustration, rather, it’s focus. “I just got to keep evolving and keep making stuff for now. Hopefully all the dots can connect later.”

Now, with the release of his new album, everything is a lot., which is set for release on November 14, Wale enters what feels like a distinctly mature phase of his career. Listeners are witnessing him charge sharper introspection, emotional clarity, and a decisively adult thematic lexicon. It has been four years since the release of his last album, Folarin II, and the gap holds meaning. Especially in an industry driven by constant output, and sole clout chasing, Wale’s return signals a recalibrated creative direction rather than a simple re-entry into the cycle.