The rap star was celebrating the sequel to his seminal mixtape, Kush & Orange Juice
Wiz Khalifa couldn’t hold back his tears when he saw some of his family in the crowd during his NPR Tiny Desk performance. On Tuesday, the rap king visited the NPR offices for a 20-minute performance, featuring classics and new songs, backed by a band.
Wearing a Snoop Dogg-referencing shirt, Khalifa opened the performance with a jazzy rendition of “Red Eye,” driven by a groovy bass and a full live band. He continued with “Mezmorized” and “The Kid Frankie,” before a rock-tipped take of “Never Been.”
Following the rap star’s performance of “Up” from 2010’s Kush & Orange Juice, he ended with “Crime Bud and Women,” which led to him tearing up as he looked into the crowd to see several friends and family members, including his father, according to NPR. “Y’all made me cry!” Khalifa said, wiping tears from his face. “Fuck, y’all.”
The new performance comes two months after he released his Kush & Orange Juice mixtape sequel, Kush & Orange Juice 2, which feature 23 songs, including “Hide It” with Don Toliver, “My Influence” with Juicy J, and “Top Down” with Ty Dolla $ign.
“I see tons of maturity,” Khalifa told Rolling Stone, comparing his two albums in April. “I’m less disrespectful towards women. I definitely talk way more about my kids, and just my description of a perfect day back then is totally different from my description of a perfect day now, but it’s still cool.”
“And that’s the thing that I love about it, I’m able to speak on my reality, but still in a way that somebody who wants to be cool is going to look up to it,” he added. “It’s very positive. It is super duper positive. That’s where I’m at in my mind.”
