Feature: A-Wal; Album: "Hyphy-Nated"

Feature: A-Wal
Album: “Hyphy-Nated”

By Graham Womack
Staff Writer
June 11, 2007

A couple of years ago, 26-year-old San Jose native Alan Walker, better known as hip-hop artist A-Wal didn’t have an album, just problems. Problems with his former record label, past legal problems and problems with his father. His most recent accomplishment, A-Wal’s debut, “Hyphy-Nated,” represents the length he’s come.

It would be a stretch to say A-Wal instantly compares with Bay Area greats, though his track; “Make It Hurt,” has a catchy, danceable beat like something out of an East Coast club.

A-Wal’s lyrics have a positive message and his production has similar elements to E-40’s playfulness and Too Short’s bravado.

He also counts classic acts like the Temptations and The Stylistics as influences, saying they give him old-school swagger.

“Some people still consider me a ‘gangsta’ or a ‘thug,’ you know what I’m saying? I don’t consider myself that,” A-Wal says.

There was a time when A-Wal did run the streets. It was never anything major he said, basically just being a ‘knucklehead,’ as he put it. The most he said he ever faced was a few warrants for his arrest. However, he burned many bridges with his father.

“How are you going to be proud of somebody robbing folks?” says Alan Walker Sr., of whom A-Wal ultimately received encouragement from his father; who himself was once involved with a musical group called, “The Divine Gospel Lights.”

A-Wal had differences with his first label Lifeline Entertainment before landing at the smaller Empire Music Group last year. Still, A-Wal said he hopes to eventually be “a guru in the game.” His father is proud of what his stands for now.

“I do think he’s the wave of the future, no doubt about it,” Walker Sr. says. “It just takes time.”

For more information about A-Wal, you can check out his MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/awal.