mgk and Wiz Khalifa Bring Lost Americana to Chula Vista for a 31-Song Sunday Sweep
mgk crawled out of the mouth of a half-sunken Statue of Liberty Sunday night at North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre and didn't really stop moving for the next hundred minutes. By night three of the Lost Americana Tour's second North American leg, mgk and Wiz Khalifa had locked in. Beauty School Dropout opened. Wiz did his 45 minutes. And mgk closed the night with a 31-song catalog sweep that ran from the 2012 Lace Up cut "Wild Boy" all the way through a pair of songs nobody could have sung along to a week ago.
The stage looked enormous in Chula Vista. The Lady Liberty centerpiece, with a cigarette in her mouth instead of a torch, glowing eyes, nose rings, and one arm stretched up to the rafters, sat dead center. The whole stage was lit Marlboro red and white. mgk's mic stand was shaped like a worn-out cigarette with butts put out around the base. Whether that's commentary or just costume design depends on how seriously you want to take a guy who released his last album with a trailer narrated by Bob Dylan.
The Set
After Beauty School Dropout's opener and Wiz Khalifa's tight 45 minutes (more on that in a second), mgk dropped onto the stage on the back of "outlaw overture," with a guitar lowering from the rafters for him to grab on cue. He plays the part. Spark-shooting guitar, flame boxes erupting on the downbeats, two dancers, his guitarist Jus Lyons working an actual choreographed bit with him during "starman" while Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" sample looped underneath. Sophie Lloyd anchored the rhythm side of the stage. Rook got his solo. SlimXX held the whole thing together from the keys.
The setlist was the real thesis. Thirty-one songs over an hour and forty, no encore, deliberately sprawling. "FIX UR FACE" opened. "Wild Boy" hit early as the rap-era throwback, a deep callback for anyone who's been here since the Lace Up days. "El Diablo" pulled from Hotel Diablo and "I Think I'm OKAY" landed right after. A Kid LAROI cover of "F*CK YOU, GOODBYE" slid in early too. "miss sunshine" got the Lost Americana deep-cut treatment from people who'd actually run the album back. "bloody valentine" came mid-set with the usual pull-up moment, where mgk hauls a few fans out of the pit and onto the stage.
A "love race" / "Rehab" mashup moved the night to the B-stage in the middle of the venue. That cover choice will not go unnoticed by anyone who remembers 2018, but mgk played it straight, no winks. From there into "Lonely Road," his country-rock reworking of "Take Me Home, Country Roads." The heartland-rock pivot is no longer a surprise. He's all the way in. The live version has more snarl than the studio cut, and it sells.
"play this when i'm gone" came with the now-standard montage of his daughter Casie growing up. That's the part of every Lost Americana show that turns the room quiet whether or not you wanted it to.
The Wiz Khalifa Trio
The reason this tour exists, more than anything else, is the three-song stretch in the middle of mgk's set when Wiz comes back out. "girl next door" first, the single they dropped on May 12, which made the Wheatland opener two nights earlier its live debut. By Chula Vista it had a hook the crowd already knew. Then "tatted," still unreleased, pulled from the joint album they've been calling BEB. Fans have decided that's short for Blog Era Boys, though neither of them will confirm it. And then the moment that landed hardest, the same way it lands every night: "Mind of a Stoner," their 2013 original collab, performed together live for the first time since 2018.
It's the right pairing. Both of these guys came up out of the late-2000s blog-rap ecosystem, DatPiff, 2DopeBoyz, HotNewHipHop, the whole thing. Watching them trade verses on a song they wrote thirteen years ago, dropped into the middle of mgk's pop-punk-heartland-rock-arena-pop spectacle, felt less like a guest spot and more like a thesis statement. Two careers that should have crossed orbits years ago, on stage at the same time, no friction.
Wiz's own set, before all that, was exactly what Wiz's set always is. Inflatable blunts moving through the crowd, "Black and Yellow" hitting where it always does, "See You Again," "Roll Up," "Young, Wild & Free," and "We Dem Boyz" pushing the energy out the back of the lawn. He doesn't oversell it. He doesn't have to.
The Closer
mgk ends the show the same way he ends every show on this tour. "papercuts," "cliché," and into "vampire diaries" to close, the music video choreography recreated on stage, no encore, lights up. Thirty-one songs, no encore, and somehow you don't notice it's missing.
Beauty School Dropout deserves a real callout. The LA four-piece are at the start of a long support stretch on this leg, and they sounded locked in, particularly bassist Brent Burdett's pocket. They aren't strictly aligned with mgk's pop-punk lane, but they fit the bill the way bands at this position on a tour are supposed to fit. Loud enough to wake up an amphitheater crowd, melodic enough to send people back to the lots looking them up.
Chula Vista on a Sunday is a weird night to land a tour like this. It worked anyway.
Words and photos by Johnny Bell.