I do love her,” he admits of Solange, flashing a Cheshire. “We’re friends. She’s amazing. She’s a good person. Any single mother contributing to society the way she does — I got a lot of love for them. She’s got to do a lot on her own and raise a young black man in this day and age, so my hat goes off to her. She’s definitely an anomaly. And the way she can do that and manage to do the same things that I complain about having to do.”

    His affection is as obvious as a set of flushed cheeks. And impossibly adorable. Wale, the former mixtape rapper from inner city DC, is borderline giddy. “Did you interview Solange about me?” Wale asks. He’s sprawled across his bed; head practically buried in the pillow. “Did she smile when you mentioned my name?”

“It’s about the intangibles in 2010,” he says. “The superficial shit is cool – like, yeah she can fuck, or she got a big butt. That’s the x factor. We’re not going to have sex 24/7 so we need to be friends. I want a girl who you could hijack all her extra artificial cosmetics for a week and not even notice. Somebody who’s smart and can stimulate me mentally because when you on the road it’s not like you can look at ‘em or touch ‘em. I can’t stand girls who don’t challenge their intellect. It don’t hurt if she can sing a little bit.”