Seventeen days after hitting the streets with a powerful 20-song mix tape called "Prince of the City: Welcome to Pistolvania," Wiz Khalifa is still working on his next move, cutting tracks at I.D. Labs in Lawrenceville with Eric Dan and DJ Huggy.

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"The mix tape is done, but I still go to the studio every day," says Khalifa, also known as Cameron Thomaz, a senior at Allderdice. "I was just down there last night, writing. And I've recorded numerous jams since the mix tape's been done. I mean, I'm always working. I can't stop recording. "

"The kid is grinding," adds manager Chad Glick. "He's probably knocking out three to four songs a week, and by the time the major label debut comes out, we might have 300 songs to choose from."

In the meantime, he's testing the waters with "Prince of the City," hosted by Big Mike, with guest appearances by "some of the hotter cats" he's met at I.D. Labs -- Kev Da Hustla, Smallz Money and Ekko, as well as soul vocalist Gene Stovall, who sings the hook on "Soldier." While not an "official" release, the CD is a key part of the long-term Wiz Khalifa strategy for Benjy Grinberg, who signed the rapper to his Rostrum Records imprint and hopes to make him Pittsburgh's first true hip-hop star.

In the world of rap, says Grinberg, an Allderdice grad who spent three years as L.A. Reid's assistant before launching Rostrum, mix tapes have become a rite of passage.

"They are to hip-hop what touring is to rock," he says, "an important tool in getting the word out on an artist, and to let the streets decide whether he is ready for the world. We are, of course, looking for a deal with a major, and would've been happy to get one earlier. But it's honestly better this way. Wiz will be tried and true by the time the majors come around."

In the meantime, the mix tape is already making the kind of noise the label hoped it would.

"It's selling really well in Pittsburgh," Grinberg says. "And we're getting a lot of Internet orders from really random places across the country. So the word is spreading, which is what the mix tape is all about. He takes 25 to school every day and it's sold out by second period."

A limited release available in Pittsburgh at 10 record stores, at I.D. Labs, online at MySpace and the Rostrum Records site, and in Khalifa's backpack through first period, "Prince of The City" moved more than 1,000 units in 17 days on the streets.

"This is more for the streets and for people to purchase it hand to hand and tell all their friends about it," says Grinberg, "'cause people have been hearing a lot about him and we wanted just to sort of introduce the world to what he's going after."

Because it's for the streets, the mix tape puts the focus on the harder side of what Khalifa's going after. As Grinberg says, "That's what the streets want to hear from a mix tape. They don't want to hear commercial, poppy stuff. They want to hear what you have to say. And the beats and everything tend to be a little harder."

Once they get the major label distribution lined up, though, as Grinberg promises, they'll be able to hit you with poppier, more commercial singles -- cuts like "Take You There," which didn't make the mix tape. And Khalifa clearly has the skills to take this to the big game, a lyrical rapper with a laid-back self-assurance to his flow that makes it sound like he's already there. As he boasts in "Oh No," one of several highlights of "Prince of the City," "Wiz Khalifa got that fast to that slow flow/Cash-gettin' mojo/Say a rap/[N----s] play it back/They like 'Oh, no.' "

While Pittsburgh, as Grinberg sees it, is "the base we need to have together before we conquer the rest of the country," Khalifa's already developed a powerful online presence at www.myspace.com/wizkhalifa.

As Arthur Pitt at Rostrum Records says, "At MySpace, he's been the top independent artist in Pennsylvania as far as profile views and plays for probably about two, three months now with almost 30,000 spins, about 400 to 500 a day. So it's a lot of people coming back."

And word is spreading fast. Both Vibe and XXL have requested copies of the kid's debut. And the timing couldn't be much better for a rapper making noise from Pittsburgh.

"Obviously, Pittsburgh is in people's minds right now," says Grinberg, "with them going to the Super Bowl. If everybody's talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers and then we have this hot young rapper from Pittsburgh, that's good for him."

The original game plan at Rostrum was to have a Wiz Khalifa album on the streets this spring with major label distribution, and that clearly won't be happening. But Grinberg doesn't see it as a setback.

Pointing to his label's earlier success with Nitty, a "poppier, quicker-to-burn-out artist," Grinberg now says, "That was a really bad example of how quickly it can happen. And it burned out extremely fast. The beauty with Wiz is that we've had to grind over the past six months, nine months and release our own mix tape because what we're doing is we're building a real fan base of people that want to see him succeed, and people who when he does succeed are gonna be like, 'Yeah, I knew that dude when they were just selling mix tapes in Pittsburgh.' Which wouldn't have happened if we had just sort of gone with the major right away. And for us to sort of build that fan base on our own and then take it to the next level has ultimately been more important because it gives him a longer career."

He knows it sounds like spin, he says, but adds, "I truly feel that way."

And in the meantime, Rostrum's star is still recording.

"I like to look to the future," Khalifa says. "I mean, I have a lot of songs that I still like that I recorded a long time ago, but I have so much more in me that I don't really look too far back."

As anxious as he is to get on with his plans for world domination, though, Khalifa says he's happy with the way things have been working out at Rostrum.

"I know there's more to come," he says. "And I'm a pretty patient guy."

To find out where to buy "Prince of the City," go to www.rostrumrecords.com or www.myspace.com/wizkhalifa.