Wiz Khalifa owns the Internet

By Gabe Vodicka Thursday April 15, 2010 01:23 PM EDT

Photo credit:

In what has become the latest bizarre example of the Power of the Tweet, Pittsburgh MC Wiz Khalifa released his new mixtape, Kush and Orange Juice, on Wednesday to a rapturous online response. News of the album’s availability came abruptly via Wiz’s Twitter page, and #kushandorangejuice quickly became (and has since stayed) a top Trending Topic on that oracular, omnipresent website. Likewise, it has enjoyed an extended stay on Google Trends’ “hot searches” list.

?
Khalifa is only one of a score of young, web-savvy musicians who know self-promotion inside and out, and who exploit touch and go technology like Twitter to further their fledgling careers. In this age of endless social networking, self-fulfilling prophesy becomes the norm: Wiz Khalifa tells his 100,000+ Twitter followers about how his new tape is the hottest shit; his tweet is re-tweeted; that re-tweet is tweeted again; and so on. Eventually, a Twitter trend is born, complete with its very own #hashtag. This means it is now important.