Rapper gets the girl in new video, which premieres on MTV Jams May 31.
By Jayson Rodriguez
Wale in “Pretty Girls”
Photo: Interscope
Wale partied and showed off his Washington, D.C., roots for his breakout video “Pretty Girls,” but in the rapper’s new clip for “Diary,” he plays more of the gentleman type.
“What he wanted to do was kind of show that we, as men, when we approach a girl, we don’t always know exactly what her past was,” Rik Cordero, who helmed the shoot, told MTV News. “Whether she was angry or felt a sort of way because another dude made a mistake that we have to pay for, that was the message Wale wanted to get across in this video.”
In the opening scene of “Diary,” Wale is shown passing out flyers for an event and then approaches a group of girls, going directly up to the one in whom he’s interested. The woman, though, isn’t too impressed with Wale and quickly rebuffs him, telling him she’s not really interested.
“You didn’t even give me a chance,” he shoots back before she walks away. “It’s like that,” Wale adds.
Through a series of flashbacks, though, viewers see what happened to the female protagonist leading up to her brief encounter with Wale. She had discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her, and after she approached him, she was confronted by his “other woman,” leading her down a path of pain and confusion.
The film was shot in New York in and around Sputnik, a local bar and lounge in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The venue is featured prominently in the last scene, which involves a poetry night in which Wale’s last verse addresses his leading lady’s hardships.
His inspirational lines, delivered in a spoken-word-like soliloquy, hang in the air as she makes her way into the club, surprised to see Wale behind the microphone onstage.
“Diamonds, a girl’s best friend, is what they say, but believe me, with the right allegiance, you gonna shine anyway,” he says, as he connects eyes with her and she finally smiles back.
What do you think about Wale’s “Diary” video? Let us know in the comments!
Related Artists
