Wale has always rapped like a man who feels everything a little more intensely than the rest of us. I should know—I was there at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom some 15+ years ago, the night he signed with one of his first-ever booking agents. The paperwork happened behind closed office doors, quick and excited, but the reason for the rush started out front. Do you say 20-something? Wale stepped onstage and blew my own then-20-something mind open in a way only raw, unfiltered talent can.
I turned to my friend—Wale’s agent-to-be, who had brought me to the show specifically because he wanted to pick my music brain for feedback before signing. My feedback came in the form of barking orders, manically demanding he immediately “sign this Wale kid!” I know.
Wale eventually leveled up to Roc Nation and Jay-Z‘s orbit, then later Maybach Music, and many other heavy hitters (no offense to my mate). That night still sits in my memory as the moment I discovered Wale, before most of the world did. It was instantly clear he was cut from a more sensitive cloth than most rappers navigating the mainstream. That emotional charge has shaped every chapter of his career. Wale moves on his own time and in his own way, a true original. And after all that reflection, he returns now with a fresh new album.
A Return To The Artist Wale Has Always Been
That’s why his new album, everything is a tear. feels 100% certified organic. It also lives up to its namesake. Wale’s rap skills are a tear. His journey is a tear. Even the LP itself (boasting 18 tracks) is a lot. “A lot” may never be enough for diehards who’ve been heatedly waiting for his eighth studio album, since 2022’s Follarin II. That’s high praise for an artist whose not only surviving but thriving in the overstimulated, impatient, ADHD society we call the world today. The wait is over, so step away from your current Netflix series binge (and drop the Adderall). It’s time to focus. And we’re going to achieve this focus by using the best drug on the market… music. Released today, November 14, 2025 via Def Jam Recordings, fans can finally get that heady hip-hop hit they’ve been jonesing for with everything is a tear. The album is Wale looking inward. It’s a deeply personal exploration and reckoning with his own mental health and personal growth. Every tune is Wale giving himself permission to follow the threads he’s always pulled: vulnerability, pressure, identity, and the uncomfortable middle spaces most artists avoid when the spotlight starts to sting.
“I called it everything is a tear. because that’s exactly how life feels sometimes,” Wale said regarding the album’s title. “This project follows me as I find peace in the noise, reconnect with my roots, and remind myself that heaviness is a part of growth.”
“Conundrum” opens the album in a stream of consciousness that feels like some sort of actual waking life. That is to say: it’s not overly stylized. The multi-award-winning Wale is not arranging his crises for aesthetics. He’s walking listeners directly through the flames of (as the track calls it) his life’s conundrums. Fame vs. solitude, ambition vs. exhaustion, visibility vs. peace. Wale lays out the contradictions without trying to thread them into a tidy narrative. Because, like life, music and art don’t always go as planned. We end where we wanted to start, we stop short or keep going too long, we feel isolated, yet we are all united in life’s conundrum.
“Belly,” built on a flip of Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life,” hits even harder. For this author, who grew up in the same beautiful years of music as Wale did, this tune got me all shook up (in a good way) from the first beat. Those brilliant years when R&B made everyone cry and hip-hop was a storyteller’s game rather than big rims and 808s all day every day. A time when being a hip-hop head meant you also loved Nirvana. But I digress. Wale’s nostalgia isn’t cute or commercial; it’s grounding. He uses it to examine family expectations, identity shifts, and the internal tug-of-war he’s never been great at hiding. It’s the closest he’s come to the emotional rawness of The Album About Nothing, except now it feels quieter, perhaps more realized, like the clarity he was trying to reach was in him all along. It just took a minute to see, and another minute to put pen to page, and write it all down.
Reconnecting With Roots While Churning Out Gold
The global elements of the album, such as Afrobeats, are part of Wale’s cultural competence, and here he leans into it with intention. “YSF” with Seyi Vibez and Teni the Entertainer glows with ease, never compromising his lyricism. “Big Head” with Odumodublvck and “City On Fire” with Odeal build a real cross-continental bridge, and as Wale crosses it, track by track he’s reconnecting with his roots, and digging up musical gold in the process.
He closes with “Lonely” featuring Shaboozey, a stripped-back alt-country gift that wraps the project in exactly the tone it needs: clear-eyed, honest, and willing to sit in the heaviness. The title everything is a tear. may sound dramatic, but for an artist who’s spent his career wrestling with the weight of ambition and expectation, it’s also the simplest truth. Nor Wale puts it: “But even in the madness, there’s meaning.”
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