After numerous delays Wale finally dropped his new tape, Back to the Feature, a collaboration with 9th Wonder last Friday. So does it match or surpass his critically acclaimed Mixtape About Nothing? Wale stans can stop reading right now. Otherwise, follow J to the AAP after the jump to see his Back to the Feature review and Nike Boots rating.

Wale’s been steadily carving his way into the mainstream conscious far a while. Spitting on the opening of Mark Ronson’s Amy-less ‘Valerie’ video and featuring on Daniel Merriweather’s lead single already put him in the public eye before he dropped a single with Lady Gaga. But Wale isn’t dropping this tape to further his pop appeal or broaden his audience, he’s dropping some boom-bap. It’s as if he’s trying to remind people that he’s an MC first.

His most straightforward hip-hop effort so far opens with the self-explanatory cut “Wordplay.” Pretty much just rapping for the sake of rapping is the common thread that weaves Back To The Feature together, which isn’t really much of a theme. That’s not a problem when Wale & guests have there wordplay on lock or on the full-blown posse tracks like “Hot Shyt” with its lineup of Philly All-Stars and “Cyphr” with a resurrected State Property click. “Cyphr” actually feels like those ciphers outside of a concert where all in attendance are hyped and nobody screws it up by suddenly dropping some wack rhymes. Both these tracks coincidentally throw some jabs in Def Jam’s direction (courtesy of the guests on there) which should make even more clear were not dealing with a pop record here.

The tape’s lack of subject matter and large amount of features constitute its biggest detriment. After a half hour of hearing dudes rap about rapping and how fly they are it tends to get a bit stale, even if they all range from decent to great. Not even the chopped up soul samples and 9th Wonder snares could redeem some of these songs. Luckily there’s a few cuts on Back To The Feature which have more to say. Wale transforms Duffy’s ‘Warwick Avenue’ from the ‘last chance’ warning of a woman to a lovers quarrel in the form of a duet. And one of the highlights of the tape comes near the end when K’Naan & Wale get personal describing the immigrant’s and the child of an immigrant’s experience in America in the appropriately titled ‘Um Ricka’.

All in all it’s a good tape. The fact alone that Wale can stand his ground surrounded by this much guests, with several legends and mic monsters among them, should prove that he’s the sort of mc that’s worth giving your attention to. Another mixtape of the year is not what it is though. There’s enough clever wordplay but too little of the topicality that elevated ‘The Mixtape About Nothing’ above it’s peers for that.