For a short time early last week, a surprising entry crept into the iTunes Music Store’s overall top 10 albums: 22-year-old Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa’s Deal or No Deal, coming in just below high-profile pop releases by the likes of Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga, John Mayer, and the New Moon soundtrack. It also briefly topped iTunes’ hip-hop chart. Wait a sec — Wiz who?
If you did recognize Wiz’s name, it might have been from last year’s “Say Yeah,” with its prominent sample of Dutch trance act Alice DeeJay’s “Better Off Alone.” That single became a minor hit, but a full-length follow-up failed to materialize, and Wiz left then-label Warner Bros. earlier this year. “I didn’t get dropped from Warner, but they definitely lost interest in the project,” he tells the Music Mix. “After ‘Say Yeah,’ I think they wanted me to be that artist who just does that [sound].” (A Warner Bros. rep confirmed that Wiz parted ways with the label this year, but declined further comment.)
Yesterday evening at 8 P.M. Eastern, HBO began airing the two-night all-star concert that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame put on in NYC a few weeks back. To give you a sense of the material they were working with here, if the network had shown the entirety of both October dates, that broadcast would have just finally wrapped up around six this morning. Instead, HBO selected a representative sampling of the concerts’ most awesome moments — which, given the lengthy and generally unbelievable nature of the original set lists, added up to a four-hour extravaganza anyway.
John Mayer’s 
