Wiz Khalifa is MySpace Music’s “Best New Arist 2010″

Wiz Khalifa is MySpace Music’s “Best New Arist 2010″

Wiz Khalifa is tired

Twelve hours ago, however, this was not the case At that point, the Pittsburgh MC stood above a table in a room at the posh Loew’s hotel, a mammoth building that hovers above Miami’s famed South Beach Khalifa feverishly chugged from one of several bottles of Bombay Sapphire carelessly strewn about the room The slightly dazed rapper paused every so often to move toward the balcony and light a fully packed bong, filling the cylindrical glass orifice with enough smoke that it looked like a pint of whole milk Khalifa then returned to his slouch on a queen-sized bed, talking on the phone with a lady friend, giving her an ultimatum to pay his room a visit or else he would go out clubbing for fellow rapper Rico Love’s birthday

Truth is, Wiz had no intentions of going out and if his chick had come over, she may not have been very impressed The room was, one might say, rather normal—a rectangular box cluttered with weed and grinders, small glass jars of apple juice to wash down the gin, and an iPad propped on the front of the bed playing the music video for 50 Cent and Soulja Boy’s hard-edged collaboration “Mean Mug ” Shortly after hanging up with his out-of-town pal, Wiz stepped down from his bed, moved over to his open laptop, pulled up Twitter and tweeted rather conspicuously: “We living CRAZY large ”

Now, a day later, that’s about the last way you would describe Wiz’s current state The rapper is sprawled out on the filthy floor of Atlanta’s Hartsfield International airport—his gangly 6’5” frame stretched to full capacity The rapper’s upper body is bundled up within the same bright red Adidas hoodie he wore the night earlier, while his head—covered by a Mitchell and Ness vintage Bulls baseball cap—rests upon a $1500 piece of Louis Vuitton luggage “I’m gonna be dead tomorrow,” Wiz said the night before as he prepared to go onstage for a show at the University of Miami And, though he made it through, as he lies there on the floor of Hartsfield International, Khalifa looks absolutely spent

“How long we been on the road?” he asks his tour manager, and longtime friend Will Dzombak “Since we were 17,” Dzombak replies, with what one gathers, is a sense of awe

Yet, as a 23-year old musical nomad, moving from one city to the next virtually every day of the year (albeit accompanied by his “family” of five of his oldest friends and fellow rappers), this unrelenting lifestyle has finally paid off Khalifa’s moment fully arrived in 2010: He broke through to the mainstream this year, largely on the strength of his hit “Black And Yellow,” an infectious ode to Khalifa’s hometown And now, along with being named our 2010 best new artist, Wiz is preparing to record easily one of 2011’s most anticipated discs, his long awaited major label debut The anticipation is building, but Khalifa seems ready to pounce

“My music is at a point where it’s right there for everybody,” Khalifa told me, before I met up with him in Miami “With the work I’ve done I’ve set myself up It’s my time ” And while, granted, the success Wiz has experienced this year has pushed him to the forefront of hip-hop culture, even he seems curious as to what all of this attention will add up to—pondering whether hip-hop heads will continue to embrace his chuckling rhymes, or merely remember him as the guy who wrote a leftfield hit about a football team “The time’s been appropriate,” Wiz says, when asked about the long road he’s taken to mainstream acceptance “I needed time to grow and learn Now I can build on top of that [Because] there’s no telling where I’ll be in another four years ”

Make no mistake about it: It has been a simply outstanding year for Wiz Khalifa In that time, the lanky MC has played 140 shows—selling out all but five, sometimes in a single day He’s sold over 90,000 tickets and, at some venues like New York City’s Highline Ballroom, tickets sold out seven weeks in advance Perhaps most shocking of all, though, is the fact that his recent sold out tour—occurring amid a record-low concert season—happened without receiving almost any mainstream radio play Nearly all dates of his aptly titled Waken Baken Tour sold out prior to “Black and Yellow” being wholeheartedly embraced by urban stations across the country

The reality is, even those closely involved with Kahlifa seem rather shocked by that particular song’s curt rise up the charts “We didn’t spend a cent to break this record,” says Zvi Edelman, Vice President of A&R at Atlantic Records, the label that signed Wiz this past summer “It just broke ” Edelman believes the success of “Black and Yellow” is not just a testament to how good of a writer Wiz is, but also displays just how much he has been able to create his own diehard following “People ride for him now,” Edelman says, “and his brand ”

“It’s my time” says Khalifa “Who knows where I’ll be in four years ”

That “brand,” as Edelman puts it, is speaking to a new demographic of hip-hop fans—an audience that is so eclectic that it seems virtually foreign to his new handlers “It’s not any segment—it’s everybody,” Edelman says of Wiz’s fans “There [are] thugs, white college kids, black college kids, frat boys It’s like, ‘How do all these people know about him?’” “I got accustomed to seeing a certain demographic at [hip-hop] shows,” adds Peter Schwartz, booking agent for Khalfia, and Vice President of the New York talent firm, The Agency Group “On first sight, [his audience] was obviously different ”

Schwartz has been able to parlay that new fanbase into impressive tour numbers—in 2010, the demand for Wiz was palpable “Over the course of [this] year we’ve been able to turn it from ‘Who’s Wiz?’ to ‘How many shows can I get?’” Schwartz says Yet, beyond the crazy tour numbers and hit singles, Khalifa’s most immediate impact has been on the new genre of hip-hop that he finds himself at the forefront of—it’s party-friendly rap that, although promoting puffing ounces of herb, largely draws its sound from early-‘90s socially conscious hip-hop veterans like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, two groups that were re-defining hip-hop when Wiz was only a toddler

Born on September 8, 1987, in Minot, North Dakota, as the only child to a mother and father both serving in the military, Cameron Thomaz (who would later derive his stage name “Wiz Khalifa” by combing the Arabic word for “successor” and “wisdom”) seemed to be prepping for his future lifestyle from an early start While he would eventually move back to Pittsburgh at age 15, a city he lived in until age two and is now virtually synonymous with, Khalifa would call South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Germany, Japan, and England home over the next 13 years Khalifa admits that the military bases he lived on in all of those locations were “Americanized,” yet his experience living abroad expanded his social awareness

“[Moving around] helped me to be able to identify with other cultures,” he says, while wrapping up a photo shoot in New York City, a few days after the show in Miami “And keep my mind open ” Wiz also discovered what would become his profession: Hip-hop, although he didn’t know what to make of it at the time “I didn’t really know what it was,” Wiz says of the genre, which was partially introduced to him through his mom’s close friend, when she used to blast Snoop Dogg’s 92 classic Doggystyle when Wiz was only six-years old “I was kinda young to even be knowing about it,” Wiz admits, “but I kinda figured it out as I went along ”

Once his family was firmly settled in Pittsburgh, Wiz took to writing and developing what would become his signature flow—a laid back, but highly accented delivery Khalifa eventually found a second-home in a local studio called ID LABS, whose owner Eric Dan recognized Wiz’s talent and allowed him to record there for free Soon after, the head of local Rostrum Records, Benji Grinberg (now Wiz’s manager) signed Wiz to his then-budding label, and immediately put the 17-year-old to work Wiz recorded his first string of mixtapes over the next few years: Prince of the City: Welcome to Pistolvania, Grow Season, Prince of The City 2 and his debut album, Show And Prove

During this time, Wiz was also signed by Warner Brothers Records, however that relationship eventually soured But rather than get discouraged, Wiz recorded his second full-length, Deal Or No Deal It was his next mixtape, however—2010’s highly-acclaimed Kush and Orange Juice—that, even without a proper release, would solidify the rapper as one of hip-hop’s brightest young stars

With its syrupy flow and chant-along hooks, Kush and Orange Juice became an underground phenomenon “Every project I’ve done I do it differently,” Khalifa says of the mixtape, which became the most searched term on Google mere days after hitting the web “But I knew it was the shit ” Suddenly, Wiz Khalifa wasn’t just another name in a slew of rappers you needed to be listening to—he was an MC who was being featured in hip-hop staples like XXL, amassing a massive Twitter following and making a permanent home atop the Myspace unsigned charts, which was where Edelman found him

After catching wind of the crazy buzz Wiz was creating, Edelman stalked the MC until Khalifa finally agreed to sign with him—a difficult task considering Wiz was dropped from Warner Brothers, who are housed under the same corporate umbrella as Atlantic, a few years earlier “He didn’t want any part of it,” Edelman says of Wiz’s initial reaction to signing “I just sat there and got rejected and rejected and rejected until they stopped rejecting me,” Edelman laughs “When somebody feels that groundbreaking to you, it doesn’t even matter ”

There are a few things Wiz Khalifa cannot live without: His mom, whom he talks to every day, his two-year old pit bull Star (whom he would “kick ass” for if needed) and weed Lots and lots of weed In August, when I first met Wiz, he was hanging out on a rooftop in Beverly Hills with fellow rising rap wunderkind, Big Sean That afternoon, he casually mentioned that, since arriving in California, he had smoked four ounces of weed in four days, which sounds like bullshit But after seeing the pace which Wiz burns bud out on the road, it’s clear that the dude wasn’t kidding When I asked Dzombak, a 22-year-old recent Penn State graduate, if Wiz has had to slow down his habit, he responded with a laugh “Do you read the news?”

As it so happens, I do read the news And, on November 8, it reported that Khalifa was arrested after authorities found 60 grams of marijuana on his tour bus in Greenville, North Carolina Wiz was charged with a felony count of trafficking marijuana, a felony count of maintaining a dwelling vehicle/place for sale or storage, and one misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia He was released after posting $300,000 bail The recent arrest does not appear to be affecting his rate of blazing, though: Minutes after being released from jail, Khalifa tweeted “Waken…baken…wrist still achin thnx for tha love and support” and in Miami, he was outwardly upset before the show because he couldn’t spark up on a college campus “We can’t come out smelling like us,” he joked

“I knew it was the shit,” Khalifa says of Kush and Orange Juice

Wiz is also enjoying meeting his idols In the days before his Miami gig, he cut a track with iconic pop producer Pharrell Williams and joined Diddy and his new girl group Dirty Money (whom he collaborated with on the track “I Wish” for Diddy’s new album Last Train To Paris) on a Fort Lauderdale helipad for the mogul’s music video shoot for “Coming Home ” Wiz also recently cut a track called “This Weed Is Mine” with his former childhood influence Snoop Dogg, for the fellow gangly marijuana-obsessed rapper’s upcoming album, Doggumentary And, on top of all of that, he cut a “top secret” remix for “Black and Yellow” and partnered up with the likes of producing big-shots Stargate and Jim Jonsin for his Atlantic debut, which is currently set to drop this March

But in Syracuse, the night after his Miami show, as Wiz and his crew hang in a warehouse-like dressing room in the basement of the school’s Goldstein Auditorium, all he can focus on is hitting the stage Like a Nascar driver switching from zero to 60, Khalifa bounds forward once the show starts From one cut to the next, old (“Ink My Whole Body”) to new (“Mesmerized”), Wiz flutters on his tiptoes, ripping off his jacket, then his white T-shirt to reveal a body covered in a full array of tattoos But the audience seems a bit green to Wiz throughout

After jumping offstage, and retiring to the dressing room, Wiz is a bit baffled “These new crowds are weird,” he says, slightly put off by the fact that those on hand seemed to get far more excited for “Black and Yellow” than any of the other tracks he performed But then, rather surprisingly, his concerns subside “It doesn’t bother me at all,” Wiz says of the fans who, at this point, only know him for one song “At the end of the day everybody is into the same thing Everybody’s in this shit together ”

If you were Wiz Khalifa right now, you might be a bit more on edge Indeed, his hit single, sold-out shows and laundry-list of top-notch collaborators coming together for his Atlantic debut would point at the beginning of a run atop the hip-hop game But one has to question whether Khalifa’s success will continue, or merely fade as quickly as it came Hardly any of this seems to be on Khalifa’s mind, however, as he rushes from the basement of the Syracuse gig, stopping to take an obligatory picture with the fraternity that sponsored the concert, before bolting to his hotel room less than 100 yards away Of course, in that time he’s assaulted by a slew of college girls who make their way up to his hotel room with him, demanding that Wiz show them how to roll a joint before professing that “Pittsburgh is awesome,” although they likely have never been

Minutes later, we’re hot-boxing the hotel bathroom with Dzombak, Wiz’s DJ that night and the three wide-eyed girls Dzombak takes a wet towel and lodges it under the door to make sure that the smoke stays inside Even as the pressure of what may come in 2011 begins to mount, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Wiz probably shouldn’t be concerned with anything but the immediate present His life can be strange and exhausting, but in ways it may never be this exciting again

“This isn’t OG Kush,” Khalifa says before ripping into the joint he’s just rolled, “but it’s definitely Kush ” He takes a long drag and smiles at the blond-haired junior wearing a Santa cap in front of him Then he does the one thing Wiz Khalifa should do after the year he has had

He exhales