Between stoner cackles, Wiz Khalifa has become one of this generation’s most influential rappers. Eight years into his career, can he maintain that success?
Courtesy David Camarena
It's a little after 2:30 p.m. on a bright Sunday afternoon in New Jersey when I first watch Wiz Khalifa attempt to land an ollie. The 26-year-old Pittsburgh-born rapper is standing on a wide street that winds behind the PNC Banks Arts Center, an amphitheater off the Garden State Parkway about an hour southwest of New York City. He is here along with a half-dozen other artists and their crews on an August stop of his Under the Influence of Music Tour, and everyone has, oh, six or seven hours to burn. A handful of young photographers and band members, sweaty and shirtless, are running up an embankment or doing push-ups under the eye of a trainer. Ty Dolla $ign, an R&B singer who Wiz has helped elevate to prominence, is speeding up and down the street on a minibike. There is a small, mischievous smile on his face, as if he's imagining a version of Mario Kart where the characters smoke blunts while they drive.
Wiz, though, is focusing on only one thing: landing the ollie over a propped-up board that has pot leaves painted on its underside. For a half hour he goes back and forth, hoping to clear the eight-inch jump by kicking his back heel and sliding his front foot forward to level off. But on every single attempt, he clips the lip of the board and nearly wipes out, his branchy limbs and blond-tipped dreads splaying in different directions, his board flying off somewhere to be tracked down by whoever happens to be standing around.
Over the course of day I spend in his orbit, Wiz ollies hundreds of times. He ollies throughout the afternoon on the street while the tour's other artists relax in their massive, tinted busses. When the show starts around 6 p.m. he changes into a white basketball jersey and white basketball shorts and moves backstage to ollie for hours in a small space amongst stacks of suitcases. Women with perfectly done-up hair and clattering heels mill about, but Wiz's head mostly stays down, his eyes fixated on his feet. The clack of his board hitting the floor provides the afternoon with a sort of rhythm. From behind his DJ booth, DJ Drama yells at the crowd as he introduces one of the openers, Rich Homie Quan. Clack. Ty Dolla $ign sings his radio hit "Or Nah," which features a minute-long opening verse from Wiz himself. But he never once looks up. Clack.
Courtesy David Camarena
Wiz isn't antisocial, exactly. He takes breaks to joke with his friends and solicit tips from dudes on the tour who can ollie and kickflip with ease. His grin has a quick trigger and he'll engage anyone who happens to be around. At one point he gets into a wrestling match with the more muscular tourmate Sage the Gemini, who all but pins him. Wiz is the most famous person on the overstuffed bill, but also the most visible even long after his obligations with me have been satisfied. By skateboarding he's mostly having fun and passing the time, but it also clearly gnaws at him that he can't master this skill. At one point in the day Wiz smacks into the turned-up board once again. "I hate not being able to do shit," he spits with exasperation. Then he skates over to a railing to go over his ollies while holding his balance.
Later when I sit down and talk to him, he tells me that he's been learning to skate for about four years.
"I had taught myself for a long time," he says. "But now I got one of my friends who's a professional skater who's really given me some pro tips" — he elongates the "o" in "pro" and the "i" in tips in the perfect drawl of a California surfer — "and it's helping me out. I'm diggin' it."
I ask him about his trouble landing the ollie, but before I can even finish the question he cuts me off.
"I'm gonna do that trick," he notes with forceful confidence. "It's just I haven't done it yet. I've done it but it was on different gravel, different skateboard. It was just totally different circumstances. It's like anything else. There's calculations and there's math to it and as soon as you put in the right equation you get it right. But it takes practice and practice and practice."
We're sitting in his dressing room, which is near the stage and separate from the danker, windowless spots every other artist and their crews have underground in the bowels of the amphitheater. Wiz's room, though, is the darkest. He has blacked it out using tie-dye curtains with hallucinogenic designs that look like they were pulled from an old Deadhead's living room. Aside from some sunlight peaking around the edges, the only thing illuminating the space are a few low blacklights that give the entire room a soft, purple glow. As we talk he rolls a joint the size of two of my index fingers from a pile of pre-ground weed and exhales right into my face. By the time I leave my head is swimming and the room has the haze of a dream. It's what every high school junior hopes living in a dorm is like.
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