Music

Wale says it's an advantage to be gay in the music industry

by Jeremy Mersereau

Rapper and world’s most high-profile Seinfeld fan Wale thinks artists like Sam Smith and Frank Ocean had another advantage on the road to success, aside from their talent and songwriting prowess: the fact that they’re both gay.

“People are probably going to go bad on me for saying this, but it’s an advantage to be gay in this country right now, that’s just the fact of the matter,” Wale said in a new interview with New York’s Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club. Wale told hosts Charlamagne and Angela Yee that being gay is a factor that will push one equally talented artist over another. Speaking on Sam Smith, Wale said the English singer was “talented enough to do it,” but that “there’s several other people with the same level of ability. I think it’s a double whammy. Gay and white right now is pushed to the moon.”

It wasn’t just Smith that Wale thinks got unfair recognition based on their sexuality: “Frank Ocean is a very very dope artist… he got pushed to the moon when he dropped his album, though… People look at it like you’re a hero, you’re a pioneer,” Wale said. “You think Miguel was getting those looks? Ty Dolla $ign? Not really.” For her part, host Angela Yee defends Ocean, who publicly announced his attraction to the same sex in 2012, saying that it must have been difficult to be the first to openly come out in the notoriously homophobic hip-hop community.

You can listen to Wale’s, uh, “problematic” comments here:

In the same interview, Wale also had some words for fellow Maybach Music Group artist Meek Mill, saying that he didn’t take his feud with Drake seriously enough:

“I honestly feel like [Meek] brought a pencil to a gun fight… You can’t compete with somebody who has those types of relationship. I’m telling everyone who thought Meek lost just off the strength of losing, it doesn’t matter what he made, he could have made ‘Ether 3.0.’ The opinions of the people would have been that of the kid from Toronto waxed him.”

Whatever you think about Wale’s gay advantage comments, I think we can all agree that Meek Mill did not make “Ether 3.0.”