Wiz Khalifa’s half-decade tenure as Snoop Dogg’s weed rap heir apparent has been restless: after scoring his first hit with the Pittsburgh Steelers anthem “Black and Yellow”, he followed up with Cabin Fever, a collaboration with Flockaveli architect Lex Luger, and Rolling Papers, with ebullient pop-minded production from ‘Burgh locals I.D. Labs and dance-pop whizzes StarGate. Cabin Fever 2 matched wares with Bay Area production squad The Invasion and L.A. rapper Problem, then O.N.I.F.C. traded it all in for plush, moneyed cloud rap. On this spring’s 28 Grams, it was back to the trap, and Wiz’s third album Blacc Hollywood nobly attempts to pin these rangy genre excursions down onto a single album.
From the smooth jack of Ghost Loft’s Kitsuné America 2 single “So High” to ace placements from radio titan Dr. Luke and usual suspects I.D. Labs and Sledgren, Blacc Hollywood’s production choices are inspired—but you could never mistake it for possessing an adventurous streak, thanks to the waxen array of prurient drug raps at center stage. It’s possible for an artist to be too on brand, and Wiz’s music is almost monomaniacally obsessed with outlining how much weed he has amassed and his plans for burning through it. He’s got his own strain of Afghan kush (“KK”), he breaks it up with a grinder (“So High”), he smokes it out of his own brand of rolling papers (“Raw”), he does this every day (“Stayin Out All Night”), sometimes in his car. (“We Dem Boyz”). Blacc Hollywood is a blur of late night bottle service orders and wake-n-bake seshes that imparts more elite weedhead bonafides than hopes or dreams.
But people don’t come to a Wiz Khalifa album to plunder the mysteries of the heart—they come to party. The issue, then, is that Wiz doesn’t sound like the guy rocking the party so much as the one out back baked as shit and melting into a couch. There’s a wispy resignation in his voice and a faint, noncommittal thread in the songwriting that sends a few of these songs across the line from pop accessibility to plasticity. “Hope” invites a group of gold-digging clubgoers to “Come fuck with the stoner and get stoned.” “The Sleaze” informs us that Wiz “Just copped the newest thing” and “did it with ease,” without divulging what, exactly, he bought. “So High” caps every line with an enthused “Uh-huh” refrain, but rather than wringing humor or menace from the device (a la Juvenile’s classic “Ha”) Wiz hurtles a stream of minutiae about what happens after he lights up. (“In my car, uh-huh/ Cruisin’ down the street, uh-huh/ So stoned I’ma need something to eat, uh-huh”)
Sometimes the pared down songwriting approach succeeds. “Raw” rides twinkling synths and 808s with a spirited Gucci Mane flow so in pocket you forget it’s kind of a commercial. Lead single “We Dem Boyz” delivers the album’s biggest, easiest thrill by dispensing with rapping almost entirely, sliding into a pillowy Detail production with a dash of Auto-Tune and a lyric sheet largely comprised of the titular chant: “Hol’ up, hol’ up, hol’ up, we dem boyz!” Wiz isn’t a character possessed of the right mixture of slapstick and real danger to pull this kind of rarefied goon posturing off without a wink, but the absurdity is easily half the fun.
Elsewhere, Khalifa wins when he calls in a friend. “House in the Hills” reunites him with How Fly costar Curren$y for an aspirational banger that’s home to some of the album’s best pure rapping. “KK” avoids disaster by turning its second half over to Memphis drug rap legends Juicy J and Project Pat. Taylor Gang newbie Ty Dolla $ign’s blithe hooks on “Hope” and “Still Down” are among the album’s best, and Nicki Minaj’s assist on verse three of album closer “True Colors” curtly immolates just about everything that came before it. Wiz fares much better when challenged, and the more real estate he cedes to guests, the less opportunities he’s afforded to trip himself up.
Blacc Hollywood is peak Khalifa—bleary eyed, genteel and, eager to please—but these qualities are just as often foibles as strengths, as a glut of pop-rap neck-massages bears out. Melodies coast, but they don’t always stick; everything’s too mannered, too clean, and the album is marred by a clinicality further punctuated by its bonus tracks. Cuts like “You and Your Friends” and “On Me” are looser and dirtier than anything on the album proper, and while the “We Dem Boyz” remix guts much of what made the original great, and “Incense” is essentially a bath of half-intelligible Auto-Tuned vocalizing, they stand out for taking risks. With Blacc Hollywood, Wiz has an easier time locating a pliable median between the varied whims of a fickle national audience than crafting a singular persona that draws them to him.
