Wiz Khalifa - Songwriters, Timeline and Life

Cameron Jibril Thomaz was born on 8th September 1987 in Minot, North Dakota. His parents were in the US military service. Due to the nature of the job of his parents’, he had to move constantly in his early childhood. He lived in Germany, United Kingdom and Japan and finally settled in Pittsburgh. His parents got divorced when he was just 3 years old.

He attended the Taylor Allerdice High School in Pittsburgh. He was attracted to music at a very young age and started writing his own songs at a young age of 9.

He began composing his own lyrics and started singing them. This got the attention of the local mass and earned him a decent popularity in Pittsburgh.

Later, he released his first mix tape, ‘Prince of the City: Welcome to Pistolvania’, which made him quite famous in Pittsburgh as well as in other places in the country.

Khalifa’s contribution to the mixtapes of various upcoming artists in Pittsburgh got him some attention from the president of Rostrum Records, Benjy Grinberg. He thought Khalifa had talent but his skills needed to be polished, so he decided to work with him.

After going through a 7-month training, Khalifa released his first mix-tape.

This made way for his first album, ‘Show and Prove’. This album was released in 2006.

In 2007, he released 2 new mixtapes in association with Rostrum Records. They were ‘Prince of the City 2’ and ‘Grow Season’. This was the year when he signed with Warner Bros Records.

His debut single with Warner Bros, ‘Say Yeah’ reached 25th in the Billboards rhythmic top 40 list.

He released 2 new mixtapes, ‘Star Power’ and ‘Flight School’ in 2009.

On 9th August 2009, he released a single, ‘Teach U to Fly’ and the mixtape‘How Fly’ with Rostrum Records.

In July 2010, he confirmed his association with Atlantic Records.

He launched his own Waken Baken tour, a 50 city National tour with rapper Yelawolf, his official DJ being DJ Bonics.

He released his first single, ‘Black and Yellow’ for Rostrum/ Atlantic in 2010. The single hit the number 1 spot on the Billboard’s Hot 100 list.

He released his first album, Rolling Papers in March 2011 in association with Atlantic. The album reached the 2nd spot in the US Billboards top 200 list.

His next album, ‘Only Nigga in First Class’ was released in April 2012, which was abbreviated to O.N.I.F.C in mainstream market. This also album turned out to be a hit and reached the number 2 spot on the Billboards list. ‘Work Hard Play Hard’ and ‘Remember You’ were the two singles from the album that made huge success.

Mannie Fresh produced Blacc Hollywood was his fifth album and it featured songs with Miley Cyrus and Juicy J.

He released the single, ‘See You Again’ as a tribute to Paul Walker in the Furious 7. The song turned out to be a great success and hit the top spot in the Billboard’s Hot 100 list.

He performed in the Billboards Music Awards Show in 2015 alongside Fallout Boy. They both started touring USA along with Hoodie Allen under the tour name: The Boys of Zummer tour.

Later, he released his album ‘Khalifa’, in 2016.

He announced the release of his next album, ‘Rolling Papers 2’ after the release of ‘Pull Up’, a single from the same album.

In 2016, he had controversial fallout with Benjy Grinberg and sued him for $1M including punitive charges and attorney fees. They split up after 10 years of successful partnership.

Wiz’s first album ‘Show and Prove’ was released by Rostrum and featured 17 title songs. ‘Pittsburgh Sound’ was the most popular from the album.

His second album, ‘Deal or No Deal’ proved to be a better success than the first one. It was promoted by a single, ‘The Plane’. The album made it to the 10th position of the Billboards Top Rap albums in US.

His third album proved to be quite a success. ‘Rolling Papers’ created an identity for Wiz Khalifa in the music industry. The album received a double platinum recognition by RIAA. It reached the second spot on Billboard’s top 200 list.

Khalifa’s fourth album also made it to the second spot in the Billboards list. O.N.I.F.C. had around 17 tracks and sold 148,000 copies in its first week.

His fifth album, ‘BlaccHollywood’ received a gold certification from RIAA and turned out to be in the Billboards list too.

‘Khalifa’, Wiz’s 6th album, reached the 3rd position in the Billboards R&B Hip-Hop album list. It was his fourth album release with the Atlantic Records.

In 2006, Wiz was declared as the Artist to watch by Rolling Stones.

He was named the Rookie of the Year by The Source in 2010.

12 – 12 – 12 was declared as Wiz Khalifa Day by Pittsburgh City Council.

Wiz Khalifa won the BET Award for the Best New Artist in 2011.

He received the Billboard Music Award for the Top New Artist in 2012. He also received the same for Top Hot 100 song and Top Rap song for See You Again in 2016.

He won the Teen Choice Award for See You Again for being the Choice R&B Hip Hop song and Choice song from a Movie or TV Show in 2015.

Other than these, he was nominated for a number of other awards like People’s Choice Award, MTV Video Music Awards, MTV Europe Music Awards, Grammy Awards and American Music Awards.

He had a nomination for See You Again for the Golden Globe Awards in 2016.

He was arrested in November 2010 for the use and possession of marijuana. However, he was let off on a bail of $300K. This happened during his Waken Baken tour.

He is very open about his use of marijuana and spends around $10,000 every month on it.

In 2014, the Cookie Company sponsored him his marijuana supplies. It is a medical marijuana dispenser which sells his Khalifa Kush strain, which he partnered with RiverRock Cannabis to create.

In 2011, he started dating model Amber Rose and the duo got engaged in 2012.

In 2013, they got married and have a son named Sebastian Taylor. They got separated in 2015 after Amber filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences between them. They now share the custody of their son.

His stage name, Wiz Khalifa, is drawn from the Arabic word, Khalifa that means successor and wisdom (Wiz – short).

Wiz’s main inspirational influences are Camp Lo, Jimi Hendrix, Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony and The Notorious B.I.G.

He owns a house in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.

Wiz appeared on the cover of the Magazine XXL, for being in the annual list of Top 10 freshman.

Wiz’s free mixtape ‘Kush and Orange Juice’ received so much popularity that it was the number one trending topic on twitter with hashtags #kushandorangejuice and the most searched on Google.

Wiz was named MTV’s hottest breakthrough MC of the year in 2010 with nearly 70,000 votes.