Wiz Khalifa had the right idea when he decided to name his 2007 mixtape Grow Season. Back then, he was a tall, lanky 19-year-old trying to make noise out of a buzzless Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Today, while the herb-toking rapper’s frame hasn’t filled out much, Wiz is carrying the ’Burgh on his slender shoulders—thanks to his smash hometown ode “Black and Yellow.”
Since appearing on this very magazine’s “10 Freshmen for ’10” cover last April, Wiz has become rap’s biggest breakout star. He sold out 47 of 50 dates on his Deal or No Deal tour. He watched his eighth mixtape, Kush & Orange Juice, become a trending topic on Twitter. And he signed to Atlantic Records, through Pittsburgh indie label Rostrum Records. Along the way, there was a weed bust, an on-the-hush relationship with Kanye West’s ex-girlfriend Amber Rose, and a spirited performance of the song that was about to become No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ AFC championship game against the New York Jets this past January.
It’s been quite the ride. So on the eve of the release of his first major-label effort, Rolling Papers, the Taylor Gang general sat down with XXL for a year in review.
April 14, 2010
Kush & Orange Juice becomes a No. 1 trending topic on Twitter
“It took me from October 2009 all the way up to about March 2010, where I recorded my last couple of songs for the tape… That one really didn’t surprise me. I had been planning that for so long. I was putting that together and nailing my sound down. Even the promotion of it had started in August of 2009. That’s when I first started saying anything about Kush & Orange Juice and applying that name. Even in my XXL [2010 Freshman] freestyle, I said, ‘Kush and orange juice.’ In my head, I was already Kush & Orange Juice’d out. It was just that I was puttin’ it down and gettin’ it ready for everybody else.”
More after the jump!
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