Weirdly there's not much acknowledgment of these seemingly big transitions. He's a legitimate star now with a tabloid-fodder fiancee in Amber Rose and presumably lots more money.
Obviously life has changed a lot for Khalifa in the two years since Kush and Orange Juice was released. Over humid tracks by various producers (in-house Taylor Gang beatmaker Sledgren oversees, the aforementioned Spaceghostpurrp contributes a beat), he weaves raspy bars and singsong choruses into pleasant, low-stakes party jams. Like Curren$y, Khalifa rarely leaves his comfort zone, but can create variety within self-imposed limits. Marijuana is his muse, his raison d’être. The flip side is that there's still gas left in this tank, in part because the guy still loves weed and is still good at rapping about it. Taylor Allderdice is basically Kush and Orange Juice 2. To some degree, it's disappointing to see Khalifa shrugging off the strides he made on Rolling Papers and choosing regression over creative advancement.
Yes, the record did nosedive into B.o.B.-esque cheese in the second half, but the front end contained some of Wiz's strongest material- " The Race", "Hopes and Dreams", "On My Level". (See: Devin the Dude.) Also, Rolling Papers was actually pretty good. The list of cannabis-obsessed MCs is long and you don't have to look far to find a Wiz precursor. For one, while Kush and Orange Juice did crystallize the Taylor Gang aesthetic and help trailblaze the mixtape-to-commercial-success model for others, Khalifa was hardly the first guy to leisurely rap about weed. There are a few logical flaws in this argument. Taylor Allderdice, named for Khalifa's high school, is the rapper attempting to reclaim what he sees as his.
Concurrent with this were other artists- from psychedelic producers like Spaceghostpurpp to au courant rap crews like A$AP and Main Attraktionz, basically the whole "cloud rap" or "trillwave" movement, whatever you want to call it- who had since ran with a similar style. The gist was that Khalifa had gone too far into pop-rap with his major label debut and sacrificed the kicked-back stoner vibe that first got him wide attention.
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