Released October 11, 2011 Recorded 2011 Label Atlantic | Format Digital download Length 3:27 | |
Genre Pop rap
alternative hip hop | ||
"Young, Wild & Free" is a song by American West Coast hip hop artist Snoop Dogg and American Hip hop artist Wiz Khalifa. It was released as a digital download on October 11, 2011 in the United States it is the lead single from their Mac & Devin Go to High School soundtrack. It was produced by The Smeezingtons and features guest appearances by American singer Bruno Mars. The song samples the beat of the track "Sneakin' in the Back" from the 1974 album Tom Scott and The L.A. Express. This beat has been sampled several times, including in the song "Blue Lines" from Massive Attack's debut album Blue Lines, released in 1991. The song also received a nomination for Best Rap Song at the 55th Grammy Awards.
Contents
Background
The song samples Snoop Dogg's "Those Hollywood Nights". In an interview with MTV News, Wiz Khalifa said: "This is a family affair, man. Everybody that you see was all involved with the project. We all got love for each other, and you know, we just keeping it moving, right? That's definitely going along with the theme of being young, wild, and free - just having fun, wild'n out. The whole theme of the video, we just getting it cracking in the parking lot, man, just turning this thing out. So we had a couple little of our friends in the car, and we drove fast." Snoop Dogg added: "Yeah that's all. We just having fun. We at a big drive-in theatre so we could have as many people and have as many things happen as possible in the celebration of being young, wild, and free — having a good time."
Philip Lawrence in an interview by Rob LeDonne of American Songwriter he said "Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming. That song was an after-thought. Most of our songs come about when freestyling in the studio; we’ll get behind the mic and sing until something sticks, and that’s exactly how it came about… we never thought it would ever be heard." However, "Aaron Bay-Shuck heard it, and he said, “What the hell was that?!” We thought it was just a little something, and he told us it was a smash, and to finish it! So we did, and he put Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg on it, and made it a hit. It’s crazy how it got nominated for a Grammy; I don’t want to diminish how good the song is though, because there’s a lot of fun behind it.
Music video
The music video was filmed in February. The Drive-in Theater in the video is The Mission Tiki Drive-in Theater located at 10798 Ramona Avenue, Montclair, CA 91763. It premiered on 23 February 2012. The high school in the music video is named "N. Hale High School", a tribute to hip hop artist Nathaniel Dwayne Hale aka Nate Dogg, a frequent collaborator and cousin of Snoop Dogg, who died seven months before the song's release.
Commercial performance
In his home country of United States, "Young, Wild & Free" debuted at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100, selling 159,000 digital copies. The song peaked at number 7 on Billboard Hot 100. "Young, Wild & Free" was a certified 4x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). As of September 2012, the song has sold 3,505,000 digital units.
In the Canada, the song debuted at number 44 on the Canadian Hot 100, and peaked at number 13 on the chart.