West Coast rap veteran Glasses Malone is turning heads—and pointing fingers—in his blistering new music video “Wanted,” a visually charged indictment of what he sees as Hip-Hop’s current cultural crisis.
Framed as a fictional, high-stakes trial dubbed The State of Hip-Hop vs. The West Coast, the video captures the ongoing tension between mainstream rap’s commercial machine and the raw, unfiltered expression that birthed the genre.
In a move that’s already sparking debate, Malone casts a Drake look-alike to take the stand in a mock courtroom, symbolizing what he views as the rap superstar’s betrayal of the culture.
In a standout moment from the video, it’s dramatically announced that Drake—portrayed by the look-alike—will testify for the prosecution after “losing a rap battle,” an unprecedented act within Hip-Hop’s unwritten battle ethics.
The faux Drake solemnly places his hand on the Bible, turns, and points an accusatory finger at Malone himself, cementing the moment as both metaphor and message.
It’s a thinly veiled reference to the fallout from Kendrick Lamar’s takedown anthem “Not Like Us,” and the real-world lawsuit Drake filed against Universal Music Group in its aftermath.
Malone hasn’t held back when speaking about the video’s inspiration or its target. In a bold social media post debuting “Wanted,” he directly compared Drake to Gunna—a rapper who has faced criticism for alleged cooperation with law enforcement.
“This is a time where Hip-Hop is really under scrutiny, maybe the most scrutiny it’s ever been,” the wordsmith recently told AllHipHop.
“People don’t know if we’re still creative or if we’re even worthy of leading in the musical space right now. And then you have a rapper who people regard as part of the culture—even though I’ve disputed that—suing another rapper for his creativity.”
“And suing a label over that rapper’s creativity, trying to get the label to censor it or pull it down completely. So he deserved to be painted as the d**khead that he is. Because that was his goal—to censor Hip-Hop. And I want to make sure everybody knows that.”
To ground the record in its cultural roots, Malone brought together Jurassic 5 and LA Giantz—two groups representing opposite ends of L.A.’s rap spectrum.
“With this particular record, I’m really capturing the essence of Hip-Hop,” he told the outlet. “During the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, Lord Jamar felt like Kendrick Lamar wasn’t a Los Angeles or Southern California street urban culture.”
“He felt like The Game was more a street urban culture and that inspired me to come together with a gangster rap group, the L.A. Giantz and Jurassic 5, a backpack group.”
Glasses Malone’s “Wanted” isn’t just a diss—it’s a statement, a line drawn in the sand, and a challenge to rap’s elite to remember where the culture came from.
See Glasses Malone’s X post premiering the “Wanted” music video below.
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