Wallie the Sensei knew he could use his past to guarantee himself a better future. With mesmerizing hooks, a grief-stricken voice, and gut-wrenching lyrics that don’t spare any details, the Compton rapper drops listeners bodily into his personal stories of pain and struggle. Wallie’s warm melodies contrast beautifully with his gritty songwriting about the streets — a style that was forged in those very same streets as he freestyled with his friends about situations they faced. Those early cyphers helped Wallie become the master storyteller he is today. “I sketch and go,” he says. Spoken like a true sensei. On his stage name, “Wallie” was the name given to him in high school that stuck with him ever since. The “sensei” comes from Wallie’s admiration for Asian culture where sensei is a respectful honorific term shared in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese cultures meaning a person born before another that is skilled and provides guidance to those born after them. Wallie is thriving out of Compton’s hip-hop underground. That’s no surprise given his breakthrough, “Scandalous,” which demands attention with a passionately wailed but confidently carefree hook: “I got niggas tryna kill me for some beef that I forgot that I’m in, but you know that’s just the life I live.” With nods from the L.A. Leakers and Nick Cannon Mornings, the song has become his biggest yet, breaking into Power 106.1’s rotation without any push.