Wiz Khalifa Breaks Down His Most Iconic Songs

For me being the type of artist that I am,

I always release more and more music

just to keep people going.

♪ Around these parts I'm known as the youngest in charge ♪

♪ My tracks bang out the trunk of your car ♪

Pittsburgh Sound, I think I was still in high school

when I made that song.

I would work as a runner during the day

and then record at night.

Pittsburgh Sound was one of the songs that I recorded.

I didn't have enough money for studio time.

It was like $100 an hour.

E. Dan, he's like the owner of the studio,

he ended up becoming like my mentor, my OG in the gang.

He literally called me one day and was like,

yo, I really like your flow.

So he's like, if you come and answer the phones

and run around and do stuff that I need you to do,

then in the off time,

I want to work on some music with you too.

That was like my first jam,

where it was like, okay, we're gonna structure this

and make it a real song.

And it went to the radio as a B-side to Say Yeah.

When I did the song, I didn't know it was a hit.

Pittsburgh Sound to me was just like,

I'm making a song, you know what I mean.

It ended up defining a lot because it was like,

wow, I'm saying this is the Pittsburgh sound,

like this is how we rap in the Burgh, so it was cool.

♪ Affiliated, speculating me landing ♪

♪ Must have got me mistaken with lame ♪

This Plane.

I was traveling a lot.

I was doing a lot of things at that time

that weren't in Pittsburgh.

And it was weird because I was getting a lot more love

outside of Pittsburgh than I was in Pittsburgh.

So when I made This Plane,

that was kinda like, y'all better fuck with me now

'cause y'all gon' miss me when I'm gone, like type shit,

because I knew I was up out of here.

I was like, yo, if y'all don't catch on,

the world's gonna catch on. I think that was the summer

where I was recording with Curren$y a lot.

Curren$y, huge influence and just like my best friend.

And my homies back home, of course.

Everybody from Hazelwood, you know what I mean,

even people who don't make music but be on the block.

And if my homies don't love it,

then I ain't putting that shit out (laughs).

Straight up.

I didn't know that people would connect to it as much

because it was such a personal record,

especially at that time because nothing

was out that sounded like that, like mainstream shit,

it was more like Lil Jon, Fat Joe, DJ Khaled type shit,

you know what I'm saying, so it wasn't really like,

that was before the stoner wave had came along.

♪ Started from nothing, ended up with everything ♪

We're Done.

When I wrote We're Done, I was just really

searching through beats, and it's crazy because that was

a Camp Rock song and Demi Lovato's singing that shit.

And back then, I was just smoking pot

listening to pop records.

I like to always fuse the two,

take a pop song or a dance or alternative record

and not remix it but just

make a whole totally new song of it,

like my version of it.

If I do it, it's cool, you know what I mean.

It's not corny.

It ain't like I'm reaching.

It's still fucking rap, you know what I mean,

but it crosses over and everybody feels it.

It was at a time where my fan interaction was crazy,

it still is, but it was like, Twitter was new,

so if I would see somebody online,

I'd be like, yo, send me some beats.

And then they would just send them to me,

and the shit would end up on my mixtape.

So I got sent a pack of beats in my e-mail.

I was like, yo, just send me some beats,

and I ended up just rapping over that one.

♪ Yeah, uh-huh, you know what it is ♪

♪ Black and yellow, black and yellow ♪

Black and Yellow.

When we were in the recording session for Black and Yellow,

it was me literally switching my mind

from mixtape mode straight into I gotta make a hit mode.

I was like, yo, I'm recording the first thing

that comes to my mind.

I don't care.

We're not gonna sit in here

and rake our brains for ideas,

where I was like, the first thing that comes to my mind,

I'm recording it, I don't care if it sounds stupid.

And when the beat came on, it was like,

I was like, black and yellow, black and yellow,

black and yellow, black and,

and it sounded stupid to me.

But I was like, dude I just bought the black and yellow car,

I got all this jewelry that's black and yellow,

I'm from Pittsburgh.

I was like, I'm making the fucking song.

I don't care if it's corny.

I don't care if it's whack.

And I just thought of some shit to put in front of it

to get to the black and yellow part.

When I made the song, I'm like, alright that's my single,

and we went back and forth with the label

because they wanted me to make different songs.

I was like, I'm not making nothing else.

This is it.

Fuck y'all, you know what I mean.

They were really upset.

And it got to the point where I just didn't even record shit

because I don't want them to get confused.

I'm like, this is it.

Don't hear nothing else, this is the one.

So when it came out, it was slow.

The video was slow.

The push was slow.

But then out of nowhere, that shit just picked up on its own

and then it ended up going number one

six to eight months later.

And then we good.

♪ So what we go out ♪

♪ That's how it's supposed to be ♪

Young, Wild and Free.

Snoop had called me while I was on the tour

and was like, yo, my son is a huge fan of yours,

bro it's like,

I'm in the house and I hear this gangster ass shit,

this player shit playing.

He's like, I'm thinking it's my old shit and it's you.

And he was like, I had to find out who the fuck you were.

He was like, man, we need to make a movie.

We need to do the soundtrack to the movie, blah, blah, blah.

You need to move to LA, this another thing.

And I got Snoop telling me that,

so I was like, I gotta do it.

So as soon as I got done with tour,

I just went straight back to LA,

slept on his couch and stayed in a W until I found a crib.

And when we did Young, Wild and Free,

they had sent me the song to do on my album before,

and I thought it was so corny.

I was like, this is the corniest shit in the world.

I would never do this song.

And then I'm sitting there with Snoop,

and he played it for me.

I'm like, they sent you this song too?

He was like, yeah, they really want me to do this shit.

But honestly I think we should just do it, blah, blah, blah,

it's that other thing.

I'm like, alright you OG.

If you don't think it's whack,

if you think it's cool, let's do it.

And we knocked it out and it became like that thing.

♪ I'll be out spending all this money ♪

♪ While you're sitting around ♪

♪ Wondering why it wasn't you who came up from nothing ♪

Payphone.

I was still in my condo in Hollywood,

and then somebody just called me and was like,

yo, come to the studio.

I didn't know what the fuck I was going there for.

I came through and Adam was there and Maroon 5 was there

and it was like, we got this jam,

it's perfect for you.

And I got on there immediately and was like,

first bar was like, man, fuck that shit.

But I wasn't thinking.

And then when I came out of the booth,

I'm like, oh my god, y'all want me to clean that up?

They're like, no, it's perfect.

We love it (laughs).

I learned to just be comfortable

with my first couple takes of things

because it's like somebody who trains really, really hard.

After a while, you gotta start acting like

you know what you're doing.

In my head, I just program myself to be able to knock out

verses in 10 to 15 minutes.

♪ Hol' up, we dem boyz ♪

We Dem Boyz.

The video was crazy because there was like a dance

at the time that kids was doing in Atlanta,

it was like the hol' up, they'd be doing this little thing,

be like, hol' up, hol' up, hol' up, hol' up.

So I was like, we gotta shoot the video in Atlanta,

we gotta get the dance in the video.

I used to watch a lot of Busta Rhymes videos

and stuff like that, so I was like,

I want to make it one shot

where you see me moving but you see the environment too

and just coming back and forth.

It was just a little idea that I had,

but we got with the right director and pulled it off.

♪ How can we not talk about family ♪

♪ When family's all that we got ♪

See You Again.

I had just like gone through my divorce.

Me and my boys was like partying every day,

and then they came to me with this sad ass song

and was like, we need you to write this.

It was connected to a lot of people, like family.

That was the main thing.

The song was about family

and being that Paul Walker lost his life,

his family was missing him,

but they still have each other.

And I traveled a lot as a kid

and I had to like go two, three years without seeing my mom

because I was with my dad or I had to go

three years without seeing my dad because I was with my mom.

And then, like I said, I was going through

a divorce at the time too.

So it's like relationships, your girlfriend and your wife,

whoever it is, all of those mixed emotions of

family and people who are important to you

and what it feels like to have them go away

or the thought of them not being there

or what it took for you guys to even establish that bond,

you know what I mean, that's more or less

what I tapped into.

♪ Baby come give me something ♪

Something New.

Honestly, it wasn't even my song at first.

Yung Berg or Hitmaka, he just played me the beat

and Ty's verse, and I was like,

oh yeah, I'm jumping on there.

And I did, I did one verse.

And then I played it and I was like,

yeah, I need that song.

I was like, I'm gonna do another verse

and I'm taking that song

and I'm putting it out and shooting a video to it.

Me and Ty started collaborating just because

I'm a huge fan of his music.

I'd been listening to his music

and watching his videos on the Internet,

but I was like, yo, we gotta sign this dude.

I was like, I don't care what we gotta do.

He's gotta be Taylor Gang

because I cannot have this nigga singing like this

and not repping the gang

because he's gonna be good.

He needs to be in Taylor Gang and be that good.

Being in the position that I'm in,

I released 15 projects,

and to still drop one that sounds brand new,

that's where you see me at,

where there's just being very fresh, very new with it.