Rapper Wale has quickly gone from being a target to a celebrated straight figure after that back-and-forth over D.C.’s Black Gay Pride. If he keeps this up, he might just earn himself icon status.

Carlos, of the blog Carlos in DC, caught up with Wale as he was … waiting, for something over the weekend … and peppered him with a few questions. “At the end of the day, whether you accept it or not, it’s not going anywhere,” Wale says of The Gs, of whom he doesn’t know any. But!: “A common denominator is that you have a heart and a soul.”