★★★★★
Even during Wale's brighter days, The Gifted would have been a stretch for a Wale album title. The Sufficient? Sure. The Better Than Average? Possibly. The Fortunate? Definitely. But Gifted? That's the last word anybody would use to describe a rapper who, since Rick Ross tossed him the Maybach keys in 2011, has mastered the art of boastfully rhyming about working hard in verses seemingly written on cocktail napkins between rounds of golf...
- www.avclub.com
2013-07-02
★★★★★
Those expecting Wale to finally take his game to the next level will have to wait as his third record is inconsistent and mostly forgettable. It's not unfair to expect more from the brainy Washington, D.C., native, who has made commercial inroads and shown flashes of excellence. The MC has a deep vocabulary, ambition, and little to say here...
- www.bostonglobe.com
2013-07-03
★★★★★
Who is Wale? After a handful of mixtapes (including the excellent Seinfeld-themed The Mixtape About Nothing) and two so-so albums, The Gifted sees the Washington, DC, rapper suffering from an identity crisis. On his third album, he tries to appeal to everyone with us-against-the-world rallies (Heaven's Afternoon), strip club anthems (Clappers) and slow jams (Bad), with diminishing returns. The main problem...
- nowtoronto.com
2013-06-28
★★★★★
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Wale - The GiftedWale - The GiftedRelease Date: June 25, 2013
Record Label: Maybach Music Group/Atlantic
The only thing more disheartening than watching a once-great rapper fall into a cycle of releasing mediocre album after mediocre album (Lil Wayne, Eminem), is watching a rapper that once showed loads of potential fail to capitalize on said...
- www.absolutepunk.net
2013-06-29
★★★★★
The only thing more disheartening than watching a once-great rapper fall into a cycle of releasing mediocre album after mediocre album (Lil Wayne, Eminem), is watching a rapper that once showed loads of potential fail to capitalize on said potential with mediocre album after mediocre album. Wale is the perfect example of this...
- absolutepunk.net
2013-06-28
★★★★★
Who is Wale? After a handful of mixtapes (including the excellent Seinfeld-themed The Mixtape About Nothing) and two so-so albums, The Gifted sees the Washington, DC, rapper suffering from an identity crisis. On his third album, he tries to appeal to everyone with us-against-the-world rallies (Heaven's Afternoon), strip club anthems (Clappers) and slow jams (Bad), with diminishing returns.
The main problem...
- www.nowtoronto.com
2013-06-28
★★★★★
Wale's third official album, The Gifted, had the bad luck to come out a week after Kanye's Yeezus. It's terrible timing for any pop album; for the former backpack rapper who found unexpected mainstream pop success who went into the studio to attempt a singular, definitive artistic statement, it's bound to set up some unfair comparisons. There's also a vaguely beefy line in "Heaven's Afternoon" about how Wale wears Givenchy but doesn't wear kilts that doesn't help the situation...
- pitchfork.com
2013-06-27
★★★★★
Two years after making his Maybach Music Group debut with Ambition, Wale has unleashed the highly-anticipated follow-up. The artist's third studio album in total, The Gifted boasts 16 tracks' worth of new material from the D.C. heavyweight, including reader-approved singles "Bad," "LoveHate Thing" and "Rotation...
- www.djbooth.net
2013-06-27
★★★★★
Wale The GiftedBy Kevin JonesLong-time fans kissed off any chance of really seeing Mixtape About Nothing-era Wale again when they largely ignored his major label debut, and that stinging early rejection has continued to inform this sizable chunk of Wale's bills-paying lyricism, not dedicated to sneakers, women and blunts, ever since...
- exclaim.ca
2013-06-27
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