How Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller and Girl Talk became the new face of the music scene
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Wiz Khalifa. -
Mac Miller. -
Rapper Mac Miller has nearly 230,000 followers on Twitter. -
Girl Talk. -
Benjy Grinberg, left, and Wiz Khalifa, pictured in 2005, were not afraid to take the long road to stardom. -
Donora, from left, Jake Churton, and Jake and Casey Hanner, could be the next up-and-coming band from Pittsburgh.
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Throughout the history of pop, there have been times when lightning strikes in a bottle, when a city grabs hold of a "sound."
Detroit caught it a number of times, first spectacularly with Motown, then with heavy garage rock. Philly and Memphis both had soul, Chicago had blues, San Francisco hippies, New York punks, Seattle grunge, Nashville twang and LA has been split between surf rock, folk rock and hardcore.
Pittsburgh?
A fertile jazz scene back in the day and a flurry of doo-wop -- Del-Vikings, Skyliners -- but nothing that amounted to a signature "Pittsburgh sound."
The closest we came was the late '70s City of Champions renaissance when the Iron City Houserockers, Silencers, Donnie Iris and Norm Nardini churned out hard-edged bar rock with a shot of rhythm and blues. It was a perfect fit for the Steel City's gritty, working-class shot-and-beer image, right along with three yards and a cloud of dust.
Despite some of those artists still grooving along in their 50s and 60s, that scene is history now. The city's image has evolved from steel mills to high-tech, and with it, our hottest exports are a pair of jet-setting rappers -- Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller -- and a guy called Girl Talk who rocks houses with a laptop. All are prone to repping their town with black and yellow (or gold, if you prefer) Pirates, Pens and Steelers gear.
The most recent issue of XXL Magazine, a leading hip-hop publication, not only has Mac on the cover as part of the 2011 Freshman Class, it has a page devoted to Pittsburgh as the Freshman City, deeming it "hip-hop's latest hot spot."
Before that, it was loooow profile.
"I'm not so familiar with Pittsburgh in general, especially the music scene," says XXL editor Vanessa Satten. "Wiz and Mac make the city more relevant than it has been in a long time, if ever, which is a great thing for the music genre because it brings a new location, cast of character and artists, sound and feel to the music, like Toronto did last year and Houston did a few years ago. I look forward to seeing what else comes from Pittsburgh because with Mac and Wiz you already can see the diversity in the music. It's exciting."
Ryan Dombal, an editor at the taste-making music site Pitchfork, says, "Honestly, I didn't have much of a perception of Pittsburgh music before Girl Talk or Wiz came out. So they didn't change it as much as they introduced me to the idea in general. And, based on those acts' music, the scene seems pretty fun-loving -- and possibly weed-friendly."
The story so far
The new XXL-style crew, of course, wasn't the first to mess with the city's bluesy, bar-rock reputation, which ruled the weekends three decades ago at the Decade. Even in the heyday, there were bands like Carsickness, The Five and Cardboards making sure we had our own versions of British and New York punk. They forged a raw, rival scene at the Electric Banana and managed to infiltrate the Decade on weeknights.
Although those bands were fierce and creative, they never made many waves beyond Pittsburgh, in part because that kind of career ambition was anathema to the movement.
First Published March 31, 2011 12:00 am
