This week, Wiz Khalifa showed us all a new side of himself ("Trap Wiz") with his mixtape 28 Grams. Taking cues from Southern hip-hop, especially that of Atlanta, he gathered together a roster of trap producers like Metro Boomin, Zaytoven, Sonny Digital and members of 808 Mafia to flesh out his new persona. Though the music on 28 Grams bears little in common with Rihanna's, Wiz has now said that the singer was another major influence on his tape. Yesterday, he tweeted out a link to a "making of" 28 Grams video and added "Rihanna inspired this mixtape," and today, Rihanna responded positively. See their tweets below.
Clarifying his message a bit in the video, Wiz says that Rihanna, along with "everybody," encouraged him to pursue his trap side:
"I'm gonna be using autotune beats and shit like that, like real trapped-out shit. I just came up with this character called 'Trap Wiz' who's like really really rude as fuck. I was just thinking I was gonna write these songs and give them to people as I did them, but I was playing them for people, and they was like, 'Yo, you need to put this on an album!.' I'm like, 'Nah, I can't do no album like this,' but like everybody from my niggas to fuckin' Rihanna is like, 'Yo, this the shit that we wanna hear.'"
Watch the full video below.
[via]