Wale and the Myth of the Friendly Rap Class
An op-ed on why his call for more camaraderie and collaborations clashes with the way hip-hop has always treated peers as opponents.
The conversation begins not with a roar, but with a quiet, almost melancholic admission of longing. Seated in the sleek, glass-walled sanctum of a boardroom—metaphorical in its weight and literal in its setting—Wale Folarin, a veteran of the blog era’s golden class, leans in to speak with Rich Kleiman. The dialogue touches on the usual suspects of high-level industry chatter: business ventures, sports agency, and the trajectory of Kevin Durant’s career. But beneath the veneer of professional pleasantries lies a more tender, almost discordant note.
A rapper often caricatured for his emotional volatility, Wale offers a moment of stark vulnerability that cuts through the noise of the standard media run. He speaks of missing the camaraderie. He speaks of wanting to grab dinner, to link up, to bridge the gaps that time, fame, and ego have widened between him and the peers he once ran with. He recounts stories of his son, Marcus Jr., playing for Team Durant, of shared histories that predate the platinum plaques and the arena tours. It is a plea for connection in an industry that often feels like a high-school cafeteria where streaming metrics and first-week sales projections determine the seating arrangements.
This admission, delivered with the weariness of a man who has spent nearly two decades in the trenches of the culture, is profound. It is also, tragically, at odds with the fundamental architecture of the genre he inhabits. Wale’s desire for a friendly rap class—a utopia where the titans of the industry break bread and share verses with the ease of old college roommates—clashes violently with the gladiatorial reality of hip-hop. The genre, from its very inception in the burning Bronx of the 1970s, was not built on the principles of a quilting circle or a jazz collective. It was built on the break, the battle, and the boast. It is a culture of King of the Hill, where the air at the summit is deliberately thin, and the only way to breathe is often to consume the oxygen of those standing next to you. Wale’s lament is the sound of a man looking for a campfire in a coliseum.
To understand why the “friendly rap class” is a myth, one must strip away the public relations-curated image of “Black excellence” luncheons and pre-Grammy brunches and look at the biological imperative of the MC. Hip-hop is a contact sport. Its DNA is encoded with conflict. When the pioneers squared off in the parks of New York, they were not looking for collaborators; they were looking for victims. The foundational energy of the art form is the dismantling of the opponent to prove one’s own supremacy. This is not merely a stylistic choice; it is an economic and reputation-based survival mechanism. In a genre that fetishizes the concept of the “Greatest of All Time” more than any other musical tradition, peers are not colleagues. They are obstacles. The very language of the genre—”killing a verse,” “bodying a track,” “renegading” a feature—is martial. It suggests that for one artist to succeed, another must be diminished.
Wale, J. Cole, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean, Kid Cudi—this “Class of 2009/2010” represents perhaps the last generation to experience a fleeting moment of true, necessity-driven camaraderie before the inevitable fracture of success. In the beginning, they were united by the struggle of the ascent. They were the “blog era” kids, navigating a rapidly shifting landscape where the gatekeepers of the physical era were dying, and the internet was the new frontier. In those early days, collaboration was a survival tactic. A Drake feature on a song wasn’t a coronation; it was a life raft. A J. Cole verse was a co-sign that signaled to the purists that you could rap. They toured together in cramped vans and slept in questionable hotels, bonding over the shared trauma of trying to break through a ceiling reinforced by the titans of the previous era. Wale remembers the days of “In the Morning” with Drake and “Bad Girls Club” with J. Cole—moments where the chemistry felt genuine, where the shared ambition felt like a collective push rather than a zero-sum game.
But as the blog era solidified into the streaming era, the dynamic shifted. The “rising tide raises all ships” mentality works only when the ships are small. When they become ocean liners, they require vast amounts of open water to maneuver, and the presence of another vessel is no longer a comfort—it is a collision risk. The friendly competition that Wale remembers fondly, the “iron sharpens iron” ethos, curdled into a cold war. The transition was subtle at first. It manifested in “scheduling conflicts” preventing video shoots, in features that became prohibitively expensive, and in texts that went unanswered. But eventually, the silence became the noise. The “friendly” era was merely an incubation period. Once the hatchlings were strong enough, they ate each other.
The tragedy of Wale’s position is that he seems to be one of the few who never got the memo that the war had started. Or perhaps, he refused to enlist. He looks at the landscape now and sees fortresses. Drake is isolated in his massive estate, firing subliminal missiles and occasionally sending out a stimulus package to a new artist who poses no threat to his throne. Kendrick Lamar has retreated into a hermetic silence, descending from the mountain only to remind the world of his dominance before vanishing again. J. Cole plays the role of the benevolent middle child, preaching peace while systematically dismantling anyone who questions his pen. The landscape that Wale wishes to navigate with a handshake is now navigated with non-disclosure agreements and clearance forms.
Wale’s recent reflections on why he stopped sharing his personal life with industry friends are particularly illuminating and heartbreaking. He recalls a conversation with J. Cole—a heart-to-heart about his struggles and insecurities—only to hear echoes of that private pain weaponized—or at least repurposed—in Cole’s track “False Prophets” shortly thereafter. Wale revealed that he spoke to Cole on the phone, pouring out his frustrations, only for the song to drop the very next day. While Cole may have intended the verse as tough love or a general commentary on the state of the ego, for Wale, it was a violation of the sanctuary of friendship. It was a reminder that in hip-hop, everything is content. Every weakness is a bar. Every confession is a potential double entendre. The line between friend and competitor is so porous that it effectively doesn’t exist. This incident underscores the central thesis: in an environment where vulnerability is commodified, true intimacy is impossible.
The economic reality of the “feature” further complicates this myth of friendliness. In the early days, a feature was a barter—clout for clout, skill for skill. Today, it is a transaction of high finance. A verse from a top-tier rapper is not a favor anymore. It is an asset class. It costs six figures, points on the master, and marketing concessions. When friendship enters this equation, it muddies the waters. Does a friend charge a friend $150,000 for 16 bars? Does a friend delay an album release because he doesn’t want to compete with your first week sales? The answer, usually, is that business comes first. The “friendly rap class” dies the moment the accountants get involved.
Furthermore, the fans themselves are complicit in the destruction of this camaraderie. Hip-hop culture is fueled by debate. Who is top five? Who had the better verse? Who washed whom? We demand blood. We are not interested in a festival lineup where everyone holds hands and sings “We Are the World.” We want “Control.” We want “Ether.” We want “Not Like Us.” When Kendrick Lamar dropped his verse on Big Sean’s “Control,” naming names and declaring himself the King of New York, it wasn’t just a challenge. It was a restoration of order. It reminded the class that they were in a race, not a relay. Wale, who was mentioned in that verse, took it as a call to compete, but he also took it personally. He felt the slight of the exclusion from the “Big Three” narrative, a narrative that the media and fans calcified, leaving him and others like Big Sean and Meek Mill in the “bronze medal” tier.
This ranking system creates a psychological chasm between peers. How can you be friends with a man who the world tells you is better than you? How can you break bread with someone whose very existence in the marketplace makes your own art seem secondary? The human ego, fragile and ravenous, cannot sustain genuine friendship under such sustained comparative pressure. The resentment is inevitable. It breeds in the comment sections, in the critical reviews, and eventually, it seeps into the relationships themselves. Wale’s frustration is palpable when he discusses how the “Big Three” narrative was forced upon the culture, effectively erasing the contributions of the wider class. He sees himself as a peer to Kendrick and Drake, but the market treats him as a subordinate. This dissonance makes “hanging out” nearly impossible. You cannot have a casual dinner when one person is eating steak, and the other is being told they are lucky to be at the table.
Wale’s call for camaraderie is also a reaction to his own specific isolation. He has often been the odd man out—too “poetic” for the trap, too “street” for the backpackers, too emotional for the stoics. He wears his heart on his sleeve in a game that rewards the poker face. His outbursts, his social media rants, and his pleas for respect are often met with derision, which only deepens his desire for a support system within the industry. He looks at how NBA players—like his friend Kevin Durant—seem to maintain close friendships despite playing on opposing teams. But the analogy fails. In the NBA, the competition is confined to the 48 minutes on the court. In hip-hop, the court is everywhere, and the game never ends. A basketball player can lose a game and still be a max-contract player. A rapper who loses a beef can see their career evaporate. The stakes in hip-hop are existential in a way they are not in sports.
To trace the roots of Wale’s disillusionment, one must dig beneath the surface of modern industry politics and examine the culture’s bedrock. Hip-hop was born in the fires of the South Bronx, a reaction to systemic neglect and a crumbling urban landscape. But culturally, it was also a reaction to the disco era’s perceived softness and exclusivity. Hip-hop was assertive, aggressive, and undeniably competitive. The park jams and block parties of the 1970s were not cooperative talent shows; they were battles for territory. A DJ’s sound system was his weapon; an MC’s rhymes were his ammunition. If your sound was weak, you were drowned out. If your rhymes were stale, you were booed off the mic. This “king of the hill” mentality is the biological imperative of the genre.
It is the engine that drives innovation. The reason Rakim reinvented flow was to sound unlike anyone else. The reason Nas wrote Illmatic was to reclaim the crown for Queensbridge. The reason JAY-Z declared war on Nas was that there could not be two Kings of New York. This competitive drive is mimetic; it relies on the desire to possess what the other has—the crowd’s adoration, the critical acclaim, the commercial dominance. In this zero-sum game, friendship is a liability. To be friends is to lower one’s guard. To collaborate is to share the spotlight. Wale argues that there is enough room for everyone to eat, a sentiment often repeated amid streaming abundance. And economically, he is correct. There are enough streams, enough tours, and enough merchandise sales to support a vast ecosystem of wealthy artists. But hip-hop is not just an economy, but more of a hierarchy. The currency is respect. And respect is a scarce resource. There can only be one “Best Rapper Alive” at any given moment.
The “Big Three” debate that has dominated the last decade—pitting Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole against one another—is proof that the culture rejects equity. We do not want a triumvirate; we want a Caesar. Even Ice Cube, a legend from a different era, weighs in on who is the “Best Rapper Alive,” citing Lil Wayne’s metaphors as the benchmark. The conversation never ends, and it never allows for a tie. When Wale laments the lack of “linking up,” he is fighting against decades of conditioning that tells a rapper that the person standing next to them is trying to take their spot. This paranoia is not unfounded. The history of hip-hop is littered with crews that imploded the moment success arrived. The Fugees, N.W.A., Roc-A-Fella Records, G-Unit—these were brotherhoods forged in the fire of ambition, only to be shattered by the hammer of ego.
Even the specific discipline of battle rap, which Wale references as a foundational element, is built on the ritualized destruction of the opponent. While modern battle rap has evolved into a sport where opponents can shake hands after the bout, the mainstream application of that energy is far less forgiving. In the mainstream, a “loss” is a stain on a legacy. Ask Ja Rule. Ask Meek Mill. The fear of becoming a cautionary tale drives the top tier’s isolationism. Drake does not avoid a collaborative album with Kendrick Lamar because he dislikes him. He avoids it because the risk of being outshone is too significant. In a friendly class, you help your peer get an A. In the rap class, you hope they fail the final.
There was a moment, however, when it seemed like things might be different. The years between 2008 and 2012, affectionately known as the “Blog Era,” fostered a unique environment that Wale looks back on with rose-colored glasses. The internet had democratized distribution, breaking the stranglehold of the major labels. A new generation of artists—Wale, Kid Cudi, Drake, J. Cole, Big Sean, Wiz Khalifa, Curren$y—rose to prominence not through A&R meetings, but through downloads and blog posts. They were united by their “otherness.” They were the skinny jean-wearing, backpack-toting, genre-bending alternatives to the ringtone rap and gangsta rap that dominated the charts. They were the “new class,” and they moved like one. They toured together on the Campus Consciousness Tour or the Club Paradise Tour. They appeared on magazine covers standing shoulder to shoulder, projecting an image of a united front that was here to save hip-hop.
During this period, collaboration was rampant and organic. Wale and Lady Gaga (before she was a supernova) on “Chillin.” Drake and Wale on “Uptown.” J. Cole and Wale on “Rather Be With You (Vagina Is for Lovers).” These collaborations were strategic, yes—cross-pollinating fanbases—but they also felt rooted in a genuine shared experience. They were all young, hungry, and relatively broke, navigating the sudden rush of fame together. They were sleeping in the same vans, dealing with the same shady promoters, and celebrating the same small victories. Wale was a central figure in this web. He was the connector, the one who indirectly introduced J. Cole to JAY-Z, the one who linked with everyone from Mark Ronson to Rick Ross. He was the glue of the class, the one who seemed most invested in the idea of a collective movement.
But this brotherhood was fragile because it was built on the premise of becoming, not being. Once they became, the dynamic shifted. Drake skyrocketed to a level of stratospheric pop stardom that separated him from the pack. Kendrick Lamar released good kid, m.A.A.d city and was anointed the critical messiah. J. Cole built a cult-like following that allowed him to go “platinum with no features,” a badge of honor that explicitly rejected the need for the very camaraderie Wale craves. As the gap in commercial success widened, the “class” stratified. The “Big Three” separated themselves from the rest, leaving artists like Wale, Big Sean, and Meek Mill in a purgatory of success without the crown. This stratification bred resentment. It is easy to be friends when you are all opening acts. It is much harder when one of you is the headliner and the other is fighting for billing font size on the festival poster.
If there is a singular moment where the myth of the friendly rap class died, it was August 14, 2013. On that day, Big Sean leaked “Control,” a track intended as a throwaway that became a cultural detonation. Kendrick Lamar’s verse, in which he explicitly named his peers—J. Cole, Big Sean, Drake, A$AP Rocky, Tyler, the Creator, and yes, Wale—and declared his intention to “murder” them, changed the temperature of the room forever. He framed it as “friendly competition,” invoking the spirit of past legends. But the reaction from the named artists varied from excitement to deep offense. For Wale, it was a complex moment. He was acknowledged as a threat worthy of being called, but he was also publicly marked as a target. The verse forced every artist to choose a stance: were they going to laugh it off, or were they going to sharpen their swords?
The aftermath of “Control” was a hardening of lines. The loose collectives of the blog era retreated into their respective camps. The idea of the “supergroup” or the “posse cut”—once a staple of hip-hop—began to vanish from the mainstream. Why would you give a verse to someone who just said they want to end your career? This moment also cemented the “Big Three” narrative. By centering himself as the King of New York (despite being from Compton) and challenging everyone else, Kendrick elevated himself, Drake, and Cole to a separate stratosphere in the public imagination. The media ran with it. Fans ran with it. And tragically, the artists themselves started to believe it. Wale, despite his immense talent and poetic ability, found himself on the outside of this trinity. He became the “honorable mention.” This exclusion eats at an artist’s soul. Wale’s frustration, often vented on social media, earned him a reputation for being “difficult” or “bitter,” labels that further isolated him. When he calls for camaraderie now, it is easy for cynics to hear it as a plea for relevance, a request to be let back into the VIP section. But it is likely deeper than that. It is a mourning for the time before “Control,” before the lines were drawn in permanent ink.
Beyond the psychological and competitive drivers, there are hard economic realities that make the “friendly rap class” a logistical nightmare. In the music industry of today, time is the most expensive commodity. For an artist of Wale’s caliber—and certainly for those he wishes to “link up” with—every hour is accounted for. Studio time, touring schedules, brand obligations, and family life leave little room for casual socialization. But more specifically, the “feature economy” has monetized friendship out of existence. In the mixtape days, a verse was swapped for a verse. Today, a feature from a top-tier artist is a six-figure investment. Rappers like Lil Baby or DaBaby have been reported to charge upwards of $100,000 to $300,000 for a verse. If Wale wants a verse from J. Cole or Drake today, it is not a simple text message; it is a negotiation between management teams, labels, and lawyers. It involves clearance fees, publishing splits, and marketing commitments.
When money enters the equation, the dynamic shifts from artistic collaboration to return on investment. A rapper might love Wale like a brother, but if his label advises that a feature on a Wale song doesn’t move the needle for his own brand, the answer will be a polite “no,” filtered through a manager. This is the cold machinery of the industry that Wale laments. He remembers the human connection; the industry sees only data points. Furthermore, the “stimulus package” phenomenon—most famously associated with Drake—has weaponized collaboration. Drake is known for hopping on the songs of buzzing new artists, giving them a massive boost in exposure. While this looks like camaraderie, it is often a strategic move to keep Drake relevant to the youth demographic and to absorb the “cool” of the new wave. It is vampiric as much as it is benevolent. Notably, Drake rarely collaborates with his direct peers—Kendrick, Cole, Sean—in this capacity. He collaborates down, not across. This reinforces the hierarchy. You help those beneath you because they are not threats. You ignore those beside you because they are.
For Wale, who sits in the veteran tier, he is neither the “new wave” that grants cool points nor the “titan” that grants a coronation. He is a peer. And in the calculus of the modern rap economy, collaborating with a peer is a neutral move at best, and a risk at worst. It invites direct comparison on the same track. If Wale out-raps you on your own song, you look weak. If you out-rap him, you’ve beaten someone the public already undervalues. There is little incentive for the “Big Three” to link with the “Class of 2010” anymore. The economics favor isolation. The failed collaborative projects of the era serve as grim tombstones for this reality. The rumored Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole album, teased for years with release dates that never materialized, is the holy grail of lost camaraderie. The Drake and Lil Wayne joint album, once discussed as a certainty, was shelved. The Childish Gambino and Chance the Rapper tape exists on a hard drive somewhere, confirmed by Chance but never released. These projects die because the artists realize that maintaining their individual mystique is safer than risking it in a partnership. The “what if” is more valuable than the “here it is.”
Wale’s yearning for the “Team Durant” dynamic—where excellence enjoys the company of excellence—misunderstands the nature of the artistic throne. In team sports, a player needs teammates to win a ring. LeBron James needs Anthony Davis. Kevin Durant needs Devin Booker. Their success is interdependent. In hip-hop, the throne is a single chair. There are no tag-team championships in the legacy debate. When we discuss the greats—Biggie, Pac, Jay, Nas, Eminem—we discuss them as solitary figures who conquered their eras. The nature of the art form is solipsistic. It is singular. Drake’s track “No Friends in the Industry” is not a lament; it is a mission statement. He draws a sharp line between his “real” friends—the entourage he grew up with—and his “industry” peers. He knows that the industry peers are essentially coworkers gunning for his promotion. To treat them as “kin” is strategic suicide.
Kendrick Lamar understands this, too. His silence is a form of boundary setting. He refuses to engage in the day-to-day camaraderie because it dilutes the mystique. You cannot be a prophet if you are always at the party. Even Big Sean, who has attempted to bridge these gaps, has found himself sending texts to Kendrick that go to the wrong number before finally getting a response, illustrating the friction. The effort required to maintain these relationships often outweighs the benefit. When Big Sean finally connected with Kendrick after “Control,” it was respectful, but it was distant. It was the respect of two generals on opposite hills, not two friends at a bar. Wale, with his heart of a poet, wants to change the rules of the game. He wants the game to be a community garden. But the game is a strip mine. It extracts value from trauma, conflict, and ego.
The most poignant example of why Wale’s dream is impossible lies in the saga of “False Prophets.” As Wale revealed in his interview, he once viewed J. Cole as a confidant. Cole, with his everyman persona and “middle child” diplomacy, seemed like the one safe harbor in a shark-infested sea. Wale opened up to him. He spoke of his pain, his feeling of being overlooked, and his mental health struggles. Then came the song. J. Cole’s “False Prophets” contains a verse that is widely accepted to be about Wale. In it, he raps about a homie who wants to win badly, who wants the fame and acclaim so much he can’t sleep at night. On the surface, it sounds like sympathetic advice. But to broadcast a friend’s private insecurity to the world, to turn his depression into a lesson for the audience, is a profound breach of the code of friendship. It transforms a private vulnerability into public content. It positions Cole as the wise sage and Wale as the neurotic patient.
Wale responded with “Groundhog Day,” a track that was masterful, measured, and raw. He acknowledged Cole’s points but defended his own journey. The two publicly “made up” at a basketball game shortly after, maintaining the appearance of brotherhood. But the damage to the concept of friendship was done. Wale admitted in his recent interview that he stopped sharing his true self with industry peers after that. This is the chilling effect of competition. When your peer is also a writer looking for material, you cannot be fully human around them. You must be a character. You must protect your narrative.
History provides the darkest counterpoint to Wale’s wish. The story of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur is the ultimate parable of hip-hop friendship. They started as genuine friends. Tupac bought Biggie his first Rolex. Biggie crashed on Tupac’s couch. They respected each other’s craft. But the moment they became competitors for the same crown—the King of Rap—the friendship disintegrated. The media fanned the flames. The entourages added fuel. The coastal rivalries provided the spark. And it ended in two autopsies. This trauma is embedded in the psyche of the culture. Every rapper knows this story. They know that “friendly competition” can spiral into real violence with terrifying speed. The lesson they internalized was not “we should try harder to be friends.” The lesson was “keep your distance.” In this light, the isolation of Kendrick, Cole, and Drake can be seen as a safety measure. By keeping the rivalry strictly on wax (mostly) and avoiding the personal entanglements of friendship, they are preventing the next tragedy. They are choosing the cold war over the hot war. Wale’s desire for warmth ignores the danger of the heat.
So, what is the solution? If the “friendly rap class” is a myth, what is the alternative? Wale must—and perhaps is beginning to—accept a redefined version of camaraderie. Realistic camaraderie in hip-hop looks like professional courtesy. It looks like not stepping on release dates. It looks like clearing samples without extortionate fees. It looks like a congratulatory text message that remains private. It does not look like dinner dates and public bromances. It does not look like a vulnerability in the studio. It looks like the relationship between JAY-Z and Nas today. After years of vicious warfare, they have settled into a dignified détente. They collaborate on rare occasions, they invest in businesses together, and they speak of each other with reverence. But they are not hanging out playing video games. They are two CEOs merging corporations for brief, mutually beneficial ventures. It looks like the relationship between OutKast—André 3000 and Big Boi. They are brothers, yes, but they also realized that to preserve that brotherhood, they had to stop making music together. The pressure of the group dynamic, the constant comparison, became too much. They chose friendship over hip-hop.
Wale’s plea is noble. It comes from a place of genuine human need—the need to be seen and loved by the only people on earth who truly understand the specific pressure of being a rap star. But he is asking for water in a desert. By design, hip-hop desacralizes these relationships. It demands that you kill your idols and then kill your peers. As Wale leaves the boardroom with Rich Kleiman, stepping back out into the noise of the industry, one hopes he finds his peace not in the validation of his peers, but in the certainty of his own pen. He is one of the greatest poets of his generation. He has survived the blog era, the streaming shifts, and the shifting tides of relevance. He has earned his stripes. He doesn’t need to sit at the cool table anymore. He has built his own table. And perhaps, sitting there alone, or with the few “real” friends who knew him before the fame, is the only true camaraderie a king can afford.
Epilogue: A Statistical Reality Check
To ground this emotional argument in fact, one need only look at the liner notes. In the last five years, the “Big Three” have barely acknowledged each other’s existence on wax. Drake and Kendrick Lamar have not collaborated since 2012’s “Poetic Justice.” Kendrick and J. Cole have not collaborated since “Forbidden Fruit” in the same year. Drake and J. Cole recently reunited for “First Person Shooter,” but the lyrics were entirely focused on the competitive ranking of the “Big Three,” proving that even when they collaborate, the subject matter is the rivalry itself (only to be stomped out by Kendrick Lamar on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That”). This scarcity is not an accident. It is a policy. Contrast this with the early 2010s, when they appeared on each other’s albums regularly. The data confirms the thesis: as success increases, collaboration decreases.
Furthermore, look at the “stimulus” data. Drake has featured on songs with over 30 “new” artists in the last five years, including names like Yeat, Sexyy Red, and 4batz. He uses features to colonize new territory, not to build bridges with established peers. Wale, by contrast, has consistently collaborated with his peers—Meek Mill, Rick Ross, Jeremih—reinforcing his belief in the “class.” But this has not resulted in the commercial boosts that the “Drake Stimulus” provides. It has kept him in the “peer” conversation but locked him out of the “superstar” conversation. The role of the “supergroup” fantasy also plays a part. Hip-hop fans love to fantasize about supergroups. Watch the Throne is the gold standard. It worked because it was two massive egos aligning for a specific moment of imperial dominance. It was a victory lap, not a bonding exercise. Wale’s dream of a “friendly rap class” essentially asks for a permanent Watch the Throne vibe across the entire industry. But Watch the Throne was an anomaly. It was fraught with tension behind the scenes and led to a massive fallout between JAY-Z and Ye years later. Even the greatest example of collaboration ended in estrangement.
Wale Folarin is right to want more love in the game. He is right that the industry’s toxicity is draining. He is right that there is more to life than being Top 5. But he is wrong to expect hip-hop to change its nature. The genre is a shark. It must keep moving, keep hunting, or it dies. The “friendly rap class” is a school of fish swimming in formation, looking beautiful. But the shark does not swim in a school. It swims alone. And in the ocean of hip-hop, everyone wants to be the shark. So, the myth persists. We will continue to hear stories of “secret group chats” and “private texts” of support, crumbs of camaraderie dropped to maintain the illusion of community. But the banquet table Wale dreams of will remain empty. The plates are set, the candles are lit, but the guests are too busy sharpening their knives in the kitchen. Wale’s legacy, then, may not be as the connector of the class, but as its conscience—the voice reminding us of what we lost in the pursuit of being the best. And in a culture obsessed with winning, perhaps there is a quiet dignity in being the one who mourns the cost of the victory.