On Oct. 13, rapper Wiz Khalifa said in an interview: “Joints and bongs are my favorites. I don’t smoke blunts at all. Bongs are cool. They’re smoother than the pipe.”
On Oct. 30, he said in another interview: “I kind of want to break the stigma of everything I do is like a ‘stoner this’ or a ‘weed head that,’ which is cool, that’s what I built my marketing and my brand, but, at the end of the day, everyone who is successful in film or in music gets high, and they don’t look at them as the stoner.”
Did anything change in 17 days?
“Nah,” says the Pittsburgh hip-hop star behind “Black and Yellow” and “We Dem Boyz.” “People kind of keyed in one part of that article and didn’t read into what I was saying; that’s cool, because that makes headlines too.
nection from Dallas that makes him sound like he’s in a tunnel. “I wasn’t saying that I want to shake my stoner image, because I’m always going to think of myself as a stoner and marijuana enthusiast,” Khalifa, 27, adds via a cell connection from Dallas that makes him sound like he’s in a tunnel. “I just don’t want to be overlooked as anything more.
“It’s just easier for people to lean on that, rather than looking into my music or my message behind what I do. I just want to make it less easy for people to lean on marijuana; they’re going to have to pay attention to other things.”
Khalifa’s fifth album, this year’s “Blacc Hollywood,” shows glimpses of this frustrated sentiment. On “House in the Hills,” he suggests his story of a “kid that came from nothin'” should be used for motivation rather than being simplified into a cartoon about a pothead. But marijuana smoke of all scents and shades permeates the album, during which he boasts of owning a “white house higher than Willie Nelson.” And the album is mostly in Khalifa’s idiom of laid-back party music, particularly the opening track, obsessed with clubs, popping champagne bottles and women up for anything.
In his new, funny, choose-your-own-adventure video for “Stayin Out All Night,” Khalifa and his co-star, Tia Carrere of “Wayne’s World” fame, get wasted, crash a wedding, get tattoos and steal a police car. Khalifa is usually surrounded by smoke, some coming from his own mouth. He wakes up, wearing a party hat, in a cage containing a confused gorilla.
Still, there’s a more weary strain of “Blacc Hollywood”; the bleak “No Gain” shows how anxiety leads to self-medication. “I drink too much, I’m into weed, ’cause it’s better for the stress,” he raps. “I just woke up, I don’t get sleep, boy, my schedule’s a mess.” Says Khalifa: “I’m not really scared to have those feelings out there as well as the party and the feel-good. Being able to relate to people on all levels is really important to me.”
Born Cameron Thomaz in Minot, N.D., Khalifa first wrote hip-hop lyrics when he was 9. His father, who was in the Air Force and moved around a lot, encouraged his musical ambitions, and at 12 years old the rapper found himself recording and producing tracks in an Oklahoma studio. Two years later, his dad bought him a beat machine, keyboard and mixer. Eventually, Laurence Thomaz gave Khalifa a deadline.
“My dad originally wanted me to go to college, but he was always into me expressing myself and doing what I wanted to do,” says Khalifa, whose parents divorced when he was young. “He gave me a time limit as far as how long I could work on rap without going to (college).”
By now based in Pittsburgh, Khalifa, then 16, signed with indie record label Rostrum, and put out a few early singles. Then, while in high school, he added a mixtape, “Prince of the City: Welcome to Pistolvania.” Over time he built enough career buzz that his novelty Steelers anthem “Black and Yellow,” timed for the 2011 Super Bowl, became a huge hit.
“My dad always pushed me just to go beyond anything I thought I could do,” Khalifa says. “It would be things he wasn’t necessarily the best at, but he would challenge me to be better than him. That was his way of motivating me — to just be the s—.”
Drawing from Lil Wayne’s prolific approach, Khalifa releases a full studio album every couple of years, as well as mixtapes such as “Kush & Orange Juice” and “28 Gramms” to fill the gaps. He was big enough last summer to headline an amphitheater tour, although he’s back to clubs now. But for all his other career accomplishments, Khalifa’s most enduring hip-hop legacy may involve a simple fashion change: He was one of the first rappers to turn against baggy jeans after decades of dominance.
“I was definitely part of the movement, for sure,” he says. “But it’s crazy, because baggier jeans are coming back in. And I’m part of the movement as well. I’m with the times.”
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When: 6:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday
Where: House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn St.
Tickets: $50-$150; 312-923-2000 or houseofblues.com
