Throughout the span of his rap career, Wiz Khalifa has worked with a slew of artists, including some who have unfortunately passed away. In a new interview with Billboard, he looks back on his collaborations with two late rappers: Nipsey Hussle and Young Dolph.
Wiz teamed up with Hussle in 2011 for "Hopes & Dreams" off his Rolling Papers project. According to the "Black and Yellow" rapper, they'd met at the 2010 XXL Freshman cover shoot in New York and hit it off. While he was recording his album in his LA studio, he wanted to collab with his "homies," so he reached out to Nip to get him on a song.
"This is my first major label album, and I love Nip so much that he had only done mixtape stuff — but if this was gonna be my first major-label shot, I want to bring my homies with me, and the people I respect, love, and think are tight as f***. It didn’t matter if they were on blogs at the time," he said. Unfortunately, the song "ended up not being cleared because of business deals at the time."
Wiz would later go on to work with Young Dolph on the 2017 track "On the River," featured on Dolph's album Gelato. He remembers Dolph as a "cool dude" who "didn’t like to be around a bunch of people."
"He was funny, loved to crack jokes, and his music was really good ...," Wiz said of Dolph. "He was one of them dudes that was always a pleasure to be in contact with ... I loved that about him."
Nipsey was fatally shot outside his Marathon Clothing Store in March 2019; Dolph was shot and killed last November while at a cookie shop in his hometown of Memphis.