For most hip hop artists, violence is still a subject that’s broached on a regular basis. But rap has been moving away from violent records being mainstream, as evidenced by artists such as Drake, Wiz Khalifa, and Kid Cudi reaching prominent status. Khalifa was kind enough to give an interview with Vlad TV speaking about his creative process and why he decided to leave violence out of his records altogether. Wiz states that he’s not a violent person in real life, and that’s not the image he wanted to project to young kids.
“I kept violence—Well, I still keep violence out of my music because a lot of the kids from where I’m from and just not even where I’m from, but just the inner-city in general. That’s all we hear. That’s all we know. That’s all we really look up to. And it’s cool because we enjoy that from certain people, but I just always—just as a kid and being different I gravitated towards other things along with that. So, I just want to give kids an option to look at somebody who doesn’t talk about that stuff. Who they still think is [as] cool as those same people. You know what I mean? Cause that’s who I am in real life anyway. So, it’s not really hard to do that through my music.”
Khalifa recently released his latest album, Blacc Hollywood, and the record is expected to make sales of between 70 and 80,000 in its first week on the shelves. The album has received mixed reviews, but we all know Wiz better from his mixtapes anyway right?