Even if you haven’t touched Wiz’s favorite fragrance in years you’ll be transported to those dorm days of haze.Įventually, however, one has to approach the touchy subject of Wiz Khalifa himself. Spaceghostpurrp also appears (touch back on that later) along with Lex Luger, Jake One, Harry Fraud and Diddy’s boy Rob Holladay, but it’s mostly a Taylor Gang show. I’m willing to take the high road and chalk it up to Yasunori Mitsuda’s genius, though I’ll wager the Alley Boy track is easily a cut above the more-hyped Khalifa, Rick Ross and Amber Rose cut. You’ll also hear Sledgren reprise his Chrono Trigger sampling from Kush & OJ with “Never Been Part II”, a song that carries plenty of controversy with it considering Alley Boy released a song with the same sample a month earlier and a couple underground rappers have flipped it as well. Most of the other beats are handled by Taylor Gang’s established players, with Cardo doing his typically enthusiastic stoner vibe while Big Jerm underwhelms a little compared to his previous work. If you’re aware of the production on albums like Uncut Raw by First Toke or Dwight Spitz by Count Bass D, the two tracks handled by Dumont are well worth a listen. Other than Sparky Banks and Dope Couture he’s the only unknown to me across these seventeen tracks, and yet with only two beats he’s able to completely jack the spotlight. Stealing this tape are the producers and chief among them is Dumont. It’s no Cabin Fever trainwreck of a phenomenon, that’s for sure. A variety of issues halt this tape short of that being the case, but I suppose one does have to tip a hat to Khalifa for trying.

This mixtape arrives on the heels of that, complete with Khalifa’s apology for it’s radio-bending nature as well as a promise Taylor Allderdice would be what fans of Kush & Orange Juice had hoped Rolling Papers would be. It was an album that’s quickly become much easier to look back on and think… “Yeah, I suppose that was all right” rather than actually listen to. Taylor Allderdice was announced as a sort of mea culpa to the more hardcore fans for his major label debut, Rolling Papers, an album which contained enough of Wiz’s more popular mixtape traits - smooth flow, dope beats, annoyingly engaging hooks - to keep lightweights coming back yet felt decidedly light on content as a whole.

Granted that was a collaboration with Snoop Dogg, but even more enthusiastic fans of Snoop’s more recent work (such as myself) would have been surprised that project came out as anything other than a slobbered-over mess. I was (and am) also a huge fan of the most recent Wiz Khalifa project, Mac & Devin Go to High School. Atmosphere-wise it’s a perfect blend of Curren$y’s latest endeavors and a more, shall I say, dusty jazz template that speaks to me quite openly. It’s the sort of mixtape I should totally be predisposed to demanding yet I’m decidedly not.

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