July 30, 2010
Wiz announces his deal with Atlantic Records
“Everybody knows, nobody just signs a deal the day that they talk about it or the week that they talk about it, or even the month that they talk about it. If you do it the right way, contracts have to be negotiated, lawyers got to be talked to, and terms got to be worked out. So the shit was in the works for a minute. Atlantic was really, really on point with keeping it a secret and keeping it under wraps, just for my following and my movement. They were really adamant about keeping everything grassroots. It was our idea, as well. We kept it under wraps for a minute, and we just got to the point that we had to calculate these moves, and we had to tell the people at some time, so we just went ahead and did it then.”

August 7, 2010
Fans bum-rush Wiz onstage at the Boston Urban Music Festival
“I wasn’t scared, I just didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. I was more worried about that. It was a positive bum-rush—they did it with style. They didn’t jump up on me or rip my clothes off. They didn’t take anything from me. I just really felt the love. I think that they were really, really excited, and when the barrier broke, they were like, We can get to him. So I had to get out of there before it got too crazy.”

September 16, 2010
Wiz kicks off his 55-city Waken
Baken tour
“The Waken Baken tour got as much publicity as it did, really, because of all the fan support. That was amazing, selling out all of the shows that I did. Not having an album out and really being able to tour like that really caught a lot of people off guard. It made it go back to that being an important part of your project and what you’re doing—hitting the road.”

November 9, 2010
Wiz is arrested at East Carolina University, in Greenville, North Carolina, and charged with felony marijuana trafficking and possession of drug paraphernalia
“I didn’t smoke any weed onstage.
I didn’t smoke anything outside of the bus. What happened was, we came off of the bus, and there was already campus cops just circling around. We didn’t get off the bus until, like, two seconds before we had to go onstage. We got straight off the bus and went straight to the stage. So it wasn’t even like we were lingering or disrespecting the property or anything. We went straight from the bus to the stage, and they actually smelled it. And based off of the smell, they went and tried to get some of my guys to open the bus for them, and that’s when the search went down. But I was never on the bus when the search went down, and there was no weed onstage or anything.”

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