Wallo267: The Message Playlist

In the summer of 2022, a video clip went viral of podcast host and entrepreneur Wallo267 crying tears of joy upon meeting UK singer Sampha. Though the internet largely respected Wallo’s emotion, few really understood where he was coming from. “I listen to a lot of music—grew up off of hip-hop,” Wallo tells Ebro on the latest episode of The Message. “But nobody has ever made me feel the way his music [has]—made me be free, made me be happy, made me be sad. I'm thankful that I'm a human enough and vulnerable enough and transparent enough to let him know that I'm a fan. I'm your biggest fan in the world and this is what your music done to me.” Wallo, who co-hosts the popular podcast Million Dollaz Worth of Game with his cousin Gillie—a semi-retired MC and the screwball counterpart to Wallo’s straight man—appears on The Message in celebration of Mental Health Awareness Month. Having served 20 years in prison for an armed robbery—the last in a string of them, as he tells Ebro—Wallo knows just how much of a challenge maintaining peace of mind can be. His time in prison, in fact, opened his eyes to how warped his sense of humanity was as a young man in the street. “You got to embrace the human emotions,” Wallo says. “Growing up in the ghetto, the ghetto will dehumanise you—it teaches you to be tough, to be real. Tough mean don't cry when you hurt; don't feel, be numb. And that's taught in the hood a lot of times. And then you realise, I'm human. I'm doing things that humans supposed to do. A lot of that stuff I didn't connect with until later on in life when I was in prison.” For his The Message playlist, Wallo selected songs from a smattering of his favourite MCs—Meek Mill, PnB Rock, Gillie—and of course, the man who brought him to tears when they shared the same physical space. “I think art is very important to our life because it is the soundtrack of our journey,” Wallo says. “And when I met Sampha, I was crying because it was like, ‘I was looking for you for so long, bro, you don't even understand that. I'm listening to your music, I'm thinking about my brother that got killed. I'm thinking about the struggle I been through. I'm thinking about the happiness that lives inside me through your music. These different songs I'm listening to is helping me.’”