Second time in ten days, rapper Wiz Khalifa has run into some trouble with the law.
Rapper Wiz Khalifa, who has made no secret about his love of marijuana, was cited Tuesday by Winston-Salem Police for possessing it after an officer smelled the drug coming off the rapper’s tour bus, a search warrant filed in the case said.
Khalifa, 24, whose real name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, performed Tuesday night before about 2,000 people at the Joel Coliseum. Khalifa is an up-and-coming rapper who broke into the mainstream with his hit single, “Black and Yellow.”
Khalifa’s Winston-Salem charge was the second in about a week on possession of marijuana. On April 21, police in Nashville, Tenn., charged Khalifa with having marijuana in his hotel room. In 2010, he was arrested in North Carolina after police found marijuana on his tour bus after a concert at East Carolina University. Charges against him, including a drug trafficking charge, were dropped last year.
On Tuesday night in Winston-Salem, officer J.C. Renew of the Winston-Salem Police Department had been assigned to look out for people who might be selling or taking illegal drugs in the parking lot area of the Joel Coliseum, according to a search warrant filed in the case. When he came to Khalifa’s tour bus about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, he “detected a strong odor of burnt or burning marijuana,” the search warrant said.
Renew asked a man standing in front of the tour bus to open the door, and when the man did so, the smell of marijuana only got stronger, Renew said in the search warrant. He cleared out people on the bus and obtained a search warrant.
Winston-Salem police seized an undisclosed amount of marijuana and other drug paraphernalia. TMZ, the celebrity website, reported that police seized 11.39 grams of marijuana. The search warrant and the citation did not show the amount of marijuana police seized from the tour bus, and Lt. Tom Peterson of the Winston-Salem Police Department declined to say how much marijuana was seized or what kind of drug paraphernalia was found on the bus.
He said 18 to 19 other people were charged with drug possession, including one for felony possession of ecstasy. Some of the people were with Khalifa’s entourage, while others were concertgoers.
Bucky Dame, the director for the coliseum, said no problems were reported during the concert.
Khalifa lives in Hollywood, Calif., but grew up in Pittsburgh. His debut CD, “Rolling Papers,” on Atlantic Records came out last year, and he has been on tour this year.
He also has ventured into acting, with a co-starring role in the comedy “Mac and Devin Go to High School” with rapper Snoop Dogg, which is scheduled to be released on home video and digital download in July.
Late Tuesday night, Khalifa posted tweets saying, “They hate us,” and then, about an hour later, “Made it out alive,” but whether those comments were related to his charges was unclear.
On his official Twitter feed Wednesday afternoon, Khalifa seemed to be taking the citation in stride, responding to one person’s tweet about the charges with, “Hey, it happens.” And when another person posted that he or she appreciated him coming to Winston-Salem and apologized for how the police treated him, Khalifa replied, “They juss (sic) did their job.”
The court date on the Winston-Salem case is set for July 27.
