WIZ KHALIFA with YELAWOLF at Sound Academy (11 Polson), Sunday (September 26), 8 pm, all ages. $21.50. PDR, RT, SS, TM, UE.
“I can’t wait to get to Toronto,” says Wiz Khalifa from a tour bus somewhere between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. “I wanna indulge in some native festivities and get high as hell!”
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So it goes for the flippantly charismatic 23-year-old Pittsburgh-based rapper. Born Cameron Jibril Thomaz, Khalifa’s built an empire with little more than a camcorder for recording self-promotional videos, a sharp wit and a penchant for weed.
He’s an inspiration to budding lyricists everywhere (pun intended), and the fact that his Toronto show recently got bumped from the Opera House to the much larger Sound Academy is proof of his popularity.
“There was no hard part to [building] my career,” says Khalifa, “but nothing was easy either. I invested in myself and put in a lot of work.”
Since 2005, he’s released eight official mixtapes and two full-length albums. His forthcoming as-yet-untitled major-label debut (Atlantic) is already getting a heap of blog buzz.
He describes the album and its chill-inducing leadoff single, Black & Yellow, as “experimental.” No stranger to genre-bending, Khalifa sampled Alice Deejay’s trance monster Better Off Alone in his 2007 single Say Yeah.
“I’ve never actively tried to incorporate dance or rock into my music. It just happened. I tried different things, and thankfully they took off…. I’m consistently pushing my limits.”
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