6lack gives Wale his flowers for influence on hip-hop

6lack dropped an album last month after a nearly five-year hiatus. Since I Have A Lover features Wale, whose music has resonated with the singer.

“I know that Wale has always had a way with his words. I know that during times where I was still figuring out myself and figuring out my music, his music … spoke to me,” he tells Zane Lowe. “Flowers for him all day long, because everything that we see right now as far as hip-hop goes has graduated from a specific era.”

“The current day, that era is Drake. That era is Kendrick. That era is Wale. That era is Cole. These are some of the building blocks of what we have right now. So flowers for him. It was an honor to be able to reach out to him and just say, ‘I need you for something,'” he continued. 

He added that Wale took the collaborative process seriously, and credited Don Toliver and Wizkid‘s albums with helping him get through the pandemic. 

“It made me move during a time where nobody wanted to move, where we actually weren’t even able to go outside,” he says of Wiz’s Made in Lagos. “I remember that feeling of listening to that album … and just being like, ‘I could play that again all the way through and not skip a single song.'”

Since I Have A Lover was released March 24 and finds 6lack championing growth, among other things. “This is me really looking myself in the mirror and knowing how I want to be, the influence I want to have on my daughter, the influence I want to have on my future kids, my future family and knowing that with music, there is a bit of responsibility,” he says.