Wiz Khalifa

Some rappers want to take over the world; Wiz Khalifa just wants to meet girls, get money and smoke as much weed as his constitution will allow. From the beginning, there was something low-key and effortless about him, a joie de vivre that made his music feel like a party. A military kid, Khalifa (born Cameron Thomaz in 1987) spent most of his childhood bouncing around before settling in Pittsburgh. He started releasing mixtapes around 2005, racking up an increasingly high-profile set of features before breaking through with the back-to-back hit of 2010’s Kush & Orange Juice and 2011’s Rolling Papers. Khalifa has often seemed indifferent to genre, mixing hip-hop with hints of club music and the anthemic quality of great pop. That flexibility made him as likely to show up on a Maroon 5 track as a Chief Keef one. After reaching a pop peak with his 2015 Charlie Puth collaboration “See You Again”—a huge hit from the Furious 7 soundtrack—he has returned to many of his pet themes on subsequent mixtapes and albums, as well as collaborative outings with the likes of Curren$y, Cardo Got Wings, Sledgren, Juicy J, Big K.R.I.T. and Girl Talk. He has also dabbled in acting in both movies and TV, especially with voice work. After all, Khalifa knows that releasing music is only one part of establishing oneself as a successful brand these days. “You can’t just be focused on one thing,” he told Apple Music in 2020. “You have to be a personality.”