"When They Kept Talking About Me & Cudi In Every Magazine, This Is The Record They Needed To Hear"

Maybach Music Group's Wale has revealed plans to feature former rap rival Kid Cudi on his forthcoming Ambition solo album dropping this fall on a track which dismantles their past falling out.

Wale believes their collaboration has ambition high enough to reach the Top 40 music chart.

"It's a testament to where I am lyrically, spiritually, all of that, because this song almost never happened, as y'all know," Wale said of "Focused." "It feels like the record that 'Is There Any Love' was supposed to be. When they kept talking about me and Cudi in every magazine, this is the record I felt like they needed to hear -- the one that everybody was going to get behind, and it was going to go top 40 and not be corny. This is like the best top 40 non-cheesy record that you're ever going to hear in your life. That's how I feel about it." (MTV)

In April, Wale opened up about coming to terms with Cudi after a publicized back-and-forth feud.

"We handled it like men," Wale said in an interview. "That's my man. We wouldn't want to keep going on not being friends. I'm about to do my second album, Cudi is working on his rock album. We just felt like it's time. Like, 'Man, we used to be cool. We used to hang every day. F*ck all the bullsh*t.' We both had a little bit of turmoil in our lives, but we're both in a happy place now. We talk all the time now. We talk about what's going on in life. The thing about me and him is we always talk about what's going on beyond music. We always used to do that and now we're back on that now." (Complex)

A month prior, he said his close relationship with Cudi initially sparked their internal feud.

"We're close friends, and the closer friends you are with somebody the worse the fights [can] be," Wale said in an interview with Free. "We squashed it. Everything good. He good, he good. He's taking care of his kid, working hard, working on his new album. He's working with a lot of the same people, he got a lot of new faces. His circle is significantly smaller, but sometimes that's what you need to do, reevaluate your circle." (WPGC 95.5)

In late February, Cudi publicly reached out to Wale.

"@wale yooo," he tweeted. "its never too late to make things right" (Kid Cudi's Twitter)