Wale told you so. Heavily criticized since his 2009 debut, Attention Deficit sold an underwhelming 28,000 copies in its first week, the former XXL Freshman now feels vindicated. Earlier today (August 18), news surfaced that the D.C. MC's latest mixtape, The Eleven One Eleven Theory—which premiered on Jay-Z's Life and Times Web site yesterday—crashed the Hulkshare page where it was available for download. Lil Wayne and Soulja Boy have previously released mixtapes via Hulkshare, but Wale's the first artist to crash the site.

"That’s just a testament to me and my team’s hard work," Wale told XXL. "We don’t never get credit for doin' anything. They don’t ever notice what a nigga been doin’. A nigga’ll do a show sold out, 5,000 people and it won’t be on no blog. Then some other people will do it and they’ll act like this person got a bigger buzz or what have you."

Fans rushed to procure the tape after Wale announced its availability on Twitter. To let the rapper tell it, Eleven One Eleven was downloaded upwards of 350,000 times in the first hour alone. Though, a growing number of links and technical difficulties have since made it hard to keep track on downloads, Wale is confident he'll reach a milli.

"We expect it to be over 1 million over two, three days," he shared. "But I hate puttin' numbers out there when there’s no hard evidence ‘cause then you sound like you just tryin' to make up shit."

A milli or not, Wale's already won. His unprecedented feat may have gone unnoticed with the bloggers, but the God MC, Jay-Z himself, is paying close attention.

"I even talked to Jay yesterday," Wale offered. "He was just as excited. He’s seen the grind. And I consider this a testament that I’m for the people."

Tune in next week for more Wale coverage. —Carl Chery

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