BiG WiZ / Phat Boi Fre$h

You can search far and wide throughout the landscape of hip hop, but you’d be hard pressed to find an artist of Jibril Page’s caliber. Armed with a calculated delivery and painfully honest lyrics, the 23 year-old wordsmith better known as Big Wiz has carved out an undeniable mark in the Chicago hip hop scene and is ready to play doctor to the masses and inject the game with a much needed dose of truth serum. Billing himself as “the rapper next door”, Wiz may consider himself just an average guy, but his music is anything but.



Like most youth in urban circles, Wiz fell in love with hip hop as soon as he was introduced to it. After being inspired to craft his own rhymes in 1994 after hearing Outkast’s “Southernplayalisticadillacmusic” , Wiz, being a true student of music, began to develop his own style, first from combining the styles of his musical favorites like 2pac, Jay-Z, Outkast, Gil Scott Heron and Curtis Mayfield as well as local legends like Crucial Conflict, Psycho Drama and Twista. Methodical in his approach and dedicated to becoming a more polished MC, Wiz wrote one rap and one poem (which would eventually evolve into raps) everyday for the next three years, compiling an enormous body of work. Taking a grassroots approach, Wiz along with three friends decided to create an outlet for themselves in forming their own imprint, Eruption Records. The four man collective saved tirelessly to generate the capital to start the fledgling label, which would prove to be essential, as the best of the rhymes Wiz had been crafting for the past few years made their way on wax, releasing the single “Can’t Hide It” and “Walkin On A Cloud”. After receiving positive feedback on the songs, Wiz decided to go all in, quitting his job at the local Post Office to post up as a full time MC.



After relentlessly hitting stages across the city, entering every open mic, talent show and cipher he could find, Wiz began to leave his mark both on mics and minds of hungry hip hop fans who wanted more substance in their music. After hooking up with local engineers and producers such as Soundmaster T, Tony Baines, and Tommy Skillfinger as well as the Soul Selector DJ’s, Wiz dropped his critically-acclaimed debut, Datswhachugotano, in December 2004. The album’s candid subject matter and rich production garnered Wiz a spot in the coveted Independent’s Day section of The Source magazine, proving that there was most definitely a method to his madness. Having opened up for various hip hop heavyhitters including David Banner, Ludacris, Slum Village, Last Poets, Rich Boy, Twista and Crucial Conflict to name a few, Wiz has continued to open the eyes and ears of the industry with his unique brand of hip hop born on the streets of Chicago’s West Side.



Now more mature and hungrier than ever, Wiz is gearing up to release two new mixtape projects entitled “Welcome 2 L-town” and “Kill Yourself”. With production by some of the game’s top beat makers including Xtreme (Ghostface Killah, Bump J), Tony Baines (Ivy League) and Vanysh, the summer is shaping up to be even hotter than before with these releases hitting the streets.



With a fan base that ranges from backpacker college kids to those embedded in the very fabric of the streets, Wiz is poised to become a topic of conversation whenever great hip hop music is mentioned.



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