

The intensity kicks up with “Golden Salvation (Jesus Piece),” a commentary on the state of black spiritualism that includes one of the more emphatic lines on the album. It’s yet another bittersweet, soul-packed rap song about rising from a meager economic background the cameo by Maybach Music Group labelmate Meek Mill and the electro-flavored coda don’t do much to set it apart. The string-heavy “Heaven’s Afternoon,” meanwhile, sounds just plain stodgy. The single “LoveHate Thing” suffers from similar problems Wale’s prosaic raps (“As you reachin’ your goals/You gon’ meet you some foes”) almost get lost among the well-arranged piano-chord groove and the Christopher Cross-style hook sung by Dew. It’s the sign of an MC who has trouble getting out of salesman mode. On the latter track, he yaps a lot about “new black soul” during stretches that probably should’ve been pure music. Songs such as the electro-pop cautionary tale “Vanity” (whose hook borrows the “worn-out places, worn-out faces” lines from Gary Jules’ “Mad World”) and the celebration of success “Sunshine” (which glows when it gets to ear-grabbing vocals by Stokley and Dew) are somehow not completely satisfying, as if Wale’s raps are accessories instead of counterpoints. The first third of The Gifted amounts to a cycle of self-reflection, and it’s a bit of a chore to get through, even though producers No Credit, Tone P, Stokley, and Sam Dew provide some memorable sounds. To be fair, he sounds like he’s enjoying the job.

His third major-label album, The Gifted, feels fussed-over even when it’s supposed to be breezy, as if the pop-rap successes of 2011’s Ambition-“Lotus Flower Bomb,” “That Way”-earned him only pressure, not wiggle room.
#WALE THE GIFTED FREEALLMUSIC PROFESSIONAL#
In a professional arc in which art and careerism often seemed indivisible, the DMV rapper had at last completed a project that felt totally in the moment. With last year’s Folarin mixtape, it seemed like Wale had finally relaxed.
