Wiz Khalifa has his own “line” of rolling papers. His breakout mixtape was called Kush and Orange Juice. In 2010, he bragged in an interview, “I might spend, like, ten grand on weed a month. Easily.” Cool story bro.
It’s not that drug-obsessed rap is inherently bad—Jay-Z made his name repping a drug dealing past and Clipse’s coke-rap opus Hell Hath No Fury is a certifiable classic. Even non-peddlers like Gucci Mane can turn massive amounts of consumption into something genuinely intimidating: a 6’3”, 220-lb former convict on codeine is not the kind of person most of us want to mess with. Bragging about weed, though? That’s setting your sights on the suburban mall crowd, and that crowd is exactly who Wiz Khalifa appeals to on Rolling Papers.
This complaint may smack of some sort of hip-hop elitism. After all, the backpack rap of the mid-2000s (Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, College Dropout-era Kanye) is in many ways to thank for the widespread cultural acceptance of rap music we’ve seen in the past five years. But there’s a reason the only backpackers still relevant have abandoned the style’s hallmarks, which have been picked up by the likes of Drake, B.O.B., and Asher Roth: it’s pretty vanilla.
More than half of Rolling Papers treads these post-backpack waters, from the god-awful jaunt “Fly Solo” to the shitty party-rap “No Sleep.” But unlike his peers, Khalifa validates the genre to some extent. Tracks like “The Race” and “Rooftops” are hazy cuts that take all the cues of contemporary pop-rap—soft electronics, muted guitar strums, saccharine chorus hooks—and turn them into something ethereal and, dare I say, pretty. Weed- and suburban-rap are indeed good bedfellows.
Considering that most of Rolling Papers mines this territory, it’s odd that it begins on such an assertive note. The three-song run that kicks off the album casts Khalifa as a poor man’s Rick Ross—his beats are thick and ominous, and his slow, staccato flow is heavily indebted to the Teflon Don. Khalifa has none of Ross’s confidence, however, coming off more like a wide-eyed kid imitating his idols than a fliff-throwing hell-raiser. For all his efforts, “On My Level” is more “Ah, C’mon” than “B.M.F.”
To open the album with such laughable braggadocio does the back half no favors—a whole album of his smoked-up pop-rap would have made for one of the better mainstream hip-hop albums in this class. But instead, Rolling Papers feels hollow throughout, as though Khalifa is trying for so much more than he actually manages to deliver. To be fair, though, I’m sure Aqua Teen Hunger Force was a major distraction during the recording process.
Voice’s Choices: “The Race,” “Rooftops,” “Hopes and Dreams”
