Glasses Malone Pays Tribute to Hip-Hop’s Roots With New Single “Wanted” and Calls Drake a D##khead.
Glasses Malone isn’t just dropping another record. The West Coast rapper is making a few statements about the culture of Hip-Hop and condemned Drake for stifling creativity. The Los Angeles MC has released a new single titled “Wanted”, a track he describes as a salute to Hip-Hop’s foundation and the competitive spirit that has defined the genre since its earliest days.
“With this particular record, I’m really capturing the essence of Hip-Hop,” he says to AllHipHop. “During the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, Lord Jamar felt like Kendrick Lamar wasn’t a Los Angeles or Southern California street urban culture. He felt like The Game was more a street urban culture and that inspired me to come together with a gangster rap group, the L.A. Giantz and Jurassic 5, a backpack group.”
first gunna, now drake 😞 pic.twitter.com/ZqaR5xoVh7
— Glasses Malone 🏴☠️ (@gmalone) August 26, 2025
Malone stressed that the song is bigger than labels. Whether it’s gangster rap or backpack rap, he believes the culture comes from the same root.
“Jurassic 5 was considered a backpack group, but you realize they meet at street urban culture,” he explained. “The artistic expression of street urban culture is what Hip-Hop is. When you use those elements artistically to express street urban culture, that’s Hip-Hop.”
“Wanted” channels the raw energy of the cipher or the “posse cut.” All of the MCs go bar-for-bar sparring a rough-n-tumble beat full of sharp skills and lyricism.
“So again when you put a backpack group and a gangster rap group together, you can listen and you won’t be able to tell the difference because we all speak the same language,” he continued. “It’s really just an ode to Hip-Hop.”
He’s not stopping with “Wanted.”
“I got another one coming up with Busta Rhymes, Ludacris, Common – you know more dope stories,” he revealed. “But really the gem is how the record is producing uploaded and when you play it, you’ll notice it.”
In Spotify, each verse is a separate track, but when played in succession sounds cohesive. Malone has encouraged people to choose their favorite verse on social media.
As for Drake, Malone said he’s attempting to censor Hip-Hop but also trying to attack the core creative elements of the culture as well. Malone didn’t hold back.
“This is a time where Hip-Hop is really under scrutiny, maybe the most scrutiny it’s ever been,” he said. “People don’t know if we’re still creative or if we’re even worthy of leading in the musical space right now. And then you have a rapper who people regard as part of the culture—even though I’ve disputed that—suing another rapper for his creativity.
“And suing a label over that rapper’s creativity, trying to get the label to censor it or pull it down completely. So he deserved to be painted as the d##khead that he is. Because that was his goal—to censor Hip-Hop. And I want to make sure everybody knows that.”
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