Wiz Khalifa “Khalifa” Review

Release Date: 28/01/15

Stand-out Tracks: “Bake Sale”, “Lit”, “Elevated”

Promoted in part by his very public twitter beef with Kanye West late last month, Wiz Khalifa’s sixth albums Khalifa has arrived. Khalifa is almost entirely mellow with Wiz’s flow alternating from slow and paced to purely melodic. It is obvious Wiz still practices his same laidback weed-infused signature sounds. During the twitter feud, Kanye proclaimed that no one had ever heard one of Wiz Khalifa’s album from start to finish, can Khalifa prove him wrong?

Khalifa as a whole is not very different from most of his earlier work (excluding Trap Wiz) which should appeal to his core fanbase. There are traces of Trap Wiz, Khalifa’s harder rapping alter ego, but they are few and far inbetween. It is most prominent in the Ty Dolla $ign featuring song Lit, which was released nearly 6 months ago, but still made the album cut. And even on this track, it is only when the beat is flipped in the last half that Trap Wiz’s influences can even be heard.

Otherwise, the medium-paced sounds flow through the entire project. Wiz did invite plenty of his friends to jump on tracks with him. The lead single off the album, Bake Sale, features Travis Scott’s echoey voice throughout and is probably the best song off the album. Rico Love, Ty Dolla $ign and Juicy J all have verses spread across the album that are welcome breaks to the otherwise constantly present Wiz.

Ultimately this is a very by-the-books Wiz Khalifa album. All the songs are made up of motivational phrases and clever euphemisms for smoking marijuana. As such, the album never reach radio play potential due to their pace and subject matter, there are also no club-songs to dance to, nor are there any tracks where Wiz slows down and raps about a more personal subject matter. To his core fanbase, this is probably appreciated as Wiz Khalifa has been working harder on soundtracks than his own material (Fast 6,TMNT, Furious 7…) They’ll mostly be satisfied, as most simply want music to smoke to, which this album has a plenty. However, for the rest of us, one listen is probably enough.

(Originally written and published for Frequency21.com http://frequency21.weebly.com/same-ol-khalifa)