Credit: Spotify

Wiz Khalifa has been making music for 20 years, but properly announced himself to hip-hop fans in 2010 with his timeless Kush and Orange Juice mixtape. That same year, he was on the XXL Freshmen cover alongside J Cole, Big Sean, Nipsey Hussle, Freddie Gibbs, Jay Rock, and others, while signing a record deal with Atlantic Records. But it wasn’t until years later that he landed the biggest single of his career, which will be hard to top.

The Pittsburgh rapper experienced mainstream success in 2010 with ‘Black and Yellow’, his first number-one single. The track appeared on his debut album, Rolling Papers, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with 197,000 copies. Songs like ‘No Sleep’ and ‘Roll Up’, also from the album, charted highly.

While ‘Black and Yellow’ and ‘Young, Wild and Free’ with Snoop Dogg and Bruno Mars are two of his biggest songs, nothing comes close to his Charlie Puth collaboration, ‘See You Again’. The track appeared on the Furious 7 soundtrack as a tribute to Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker, who passed away in a car crash in 2013, aged 40.

Puth’s chorus hits deep, but the refrain from Wiz, where he raps, “How can we not talk about family when family’s all that we got?/ Everything I went through, you were standin’ there by my side/ And now you gon’ be with me for the last ride,” is also one of the most memorable parts of the song.

During a conversation with Stereogum, Wiz opened up about the record making him a household name worldwide. “That song made me out of this world,” he said. “Up until that point, I was a regular human being, but then people were looking at me like a ‘thing.’ The amount of weeks that it spent at number one, I think it was like 12 weeks as the number record, almost broke history but it’s tied.

“And then it being one of the most-streamed songs on YouTube, I think it fluctuates as the most-viewed song ever. You don’t fucking wake up and be like, ‘Yo, I’m going to have the most viewed song ever in the world,” but it happened to me.”

He added, “Unfortunately, those situations go on all the time, but to have a song that touches you in that moment and to be the writer of that song that touches you is a really big privilege.”

Produced by Charlie Puth, DJ Frank E, and Andrew Cedar, the track spent 12 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, equaling Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ as the longest-running rap number one. Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ replaced it in 2019.

‘See You Again‘ was the best-selling song of 2015 worldwide and was nominated for ‘Song of the Year’, ‘Best Pop Duo/Group Performance’, and ‘Best Song Written for Visual Media’ at the Grammy Awards. It also received a ‘Best Original Song’ nomination at the Golden Globes. The track is certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and boasts over 2.1 billion Spotify streams. For Wiz, it will take something special to eclipse it.