WizTheMC

One Liner: German rapper with English confessional lyrics.

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, it's rap and maybe like alternative rap.

Home: Berlin

Poster Position: Late addition
Weekend Two Only.

Saturday at 12:05 on the Miller Lite Stage.

Thoughts:  My kid played a song the other day that I figured had definitely been relegated to the basement of the one hit wonder memory banks - Gym Class Heroes' "Cupid's Chokehold."  Apparently, the song regained fame through TikTok.  The first thought I had when listening to this band was of that band - kinda lite rock, kinda rap, kinda whiny, kinda cheesy.

Three albums - 2018's Backin Toronto, 2018's Blessings in Disguise, and 2020's Growing Teeth.  In a strange development, non of his top ten tracks appear to be from those albums, they are all singles.  Most of the songs are at least short!

"For a Minute" is the top streamer by a mile, with 29.4 million streams (vs. the next closest at 5.1 million).  I'm guessing that hit on a playlist or TikTok or something.

Not terrible, just nothing special either.  Do you remember anything about it after just listening to it?  Those guitar licks and basic beat have been used 80,000 times.  It looks like it found its way onto the Good Vibes playlist along with Surfaces and Dayglow and Doja Cat.  That may be the official playlist of ACL now.

I read a background piece on him, and his background is interesting.  Born in Cape Town, he moved to Germany when he was young and worked on his rapping skills by watching YouTube with friends.  he ended up moving to Toronto to get into the English-language rap scene.  Which is a weird move to me.  I know they speak English up there, but wouldn't NYC be the epicenter of English-language rap?  Good question - what is the center of the rap universe?  Maybe it is Atlanta right now?  I know L.A. would lay claim, Houston would try, Miami, Detroit, New Orleans, and Chicago would like to be brought up, but Atlanta feels like where more big artists currently reside or represent.  Anyway, this kid chose freaking Toronto.  He spent two years there and then moved back to Germany to live in Berlin.

His second-most streamed is "All My Friends Are Stoned."  5.1 million streams.

Hey!  Another simple guitar lick and basic Casio beat!  Lookie there!  I think it must be that the lyrics are fun and he is very open about what is going on with him in each of these songs - that has to be the attraction here.

Here's one more, just because I think its better than both of those other ones - even if it will make all the owls in your neighborhood come over to see what is going on.

Seems like a nice kid, glad he's got a slot at the show, but I won't go do it.