Wiz Khalifa Explains Why His Album Sounds So Different From His Mixtapes

My dudes over at Complex carefully dissected Wiz’s love and hated Warner Bros Records debut album, Rolling Papers. Personally, I’m a Wiz fan but as a Taylor Gang mixtape purist, I felt it sounded a bit too Nelly-ish. Ether me if you want. I still listen to the LP, but connect with Kush & OJ a lot more. And, I think a good amount of Wiz fans feel the same way but never got a real explanation as to why he drifted from the sound that got him to this level.
Well, he finally broke it down pretty clearly on the first slide of this article.
Wiz Khalifa: “In my mind, I was just trying to do everything different. I didn’t want it to sound like Kush and OJ or use the Kush and OJ flows because I had a lot of people watching me from the label and my own people.

”So they would know if I was just reusing and redoing the same things over and over. So for the album personally I wanted to take it to the next level. The mind state was to do the biggest records possible, not hold back anything, and not do anything just for the sake of doing it. People don’t get it right away, it takes time and years from now they’ll understand what I was doing.”
after the jump, Wiz talks about his initial hesitations surrounding “Black & Yellow” and working with Pharrell on his next album.

”[When I got there] Stargate had a selection of beats set out for me. I went through a couple beats and I think I did a hook that day. When we got to the point that they played the ‘Black and Yellow’ beat, the first words I thought of were, ‘Black and Yellow, Black and Yellow.’

The first words I thought of were, ‘Black and Yellow, Black and Yellow.’ I leaned over to my homie and was like, ‘Man, I got an idea but it might be corny as hell.’ I don’t know why, but it was a split second that I thought it was corny. – Wiz Khalifa

“I leaned over to my homie and was like, ‘Man, I got an idea but it might be corny as hell.’ I don’t know why, but it was a split second that I thought it was corny. I was like, ‘Am I doing too much right now?’ I told him my idea and he was like, ‘Nah man, just do it.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, I’m here so let’s just work.’ I sat down, recorded the hook, and the next day I did the verses and the hook part and that was it.
(via Complex)
On working with Pharrell for his next album:
““Anybody that I get with, I wanna make my own connection with them. I’m gonna be working with a lot of different people on the new album. Like, I’m working with Pharrell, but Pharrell is known for what he’s known for. But when he gets with me, I want it to be a unique sound to the point where it’s like, ‘That’s that Pharrell and Wiz shit.’