*** Spoilers for the season finale of “The Masked Singer” to follow ***
If you already watched Wednesday night’s episode of “The Masked Singer,” then, as the performer who was revealed to be Chameleon would say, you know what it is.
That’s right: Chameleon’s head came off and underneath was none other than Allderdice High School graduate and “Black and Yellow” rapper Wiz Khalifa, who came in third on season five of “The Masked Singer.” Only judges Robin Thicke and Nicole Scherzinger guessed that Chameleon was Khalifa, with both Ken Jeong and LeAnn Rimes believing he was 2 Chainz and Jenny McCarthy thinking he could have been Gucci Mane.
Frankly, if you listened to his performance earlier in that episode of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” and didn’t realize it was Wiz Khalifa, you need to either get your ears checked or have your yinzer card revoked.
Khalifa finished just behind runner-up Black Swan, who ended up being singer-songwriter JoJo, and eventual winner Piglet, who was former 98 Degrees lead singer Nick Lachey.
“It was a goal of mine to do my best, hold it down for hip-hop and shock the world,” Khalifa said in his unmasked interview before directly addressing his costume’s severed chameleon head: “Bye Chameleon. I’m going to miss you dude. Don’t throw no parties without me, OK? Just invite me.”
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly’s Lauren Huff following last night’s “Masked Singer” broadcast, Khalifa said he was keenly aware that folks at home were on to him based on his name trending on Twitter whenever Chameleon performed.
Even though he didn’t win, Khalifa has no regrets about how he showed out on “The Masked Singer.”
“I feel like I did everything perfect for me and what I was trying to accomplish,” he told Huff. “I was really into all my song choices; I was really into all of the performances. I think every time I was competing, it was a lot of good competition there.
“So just to even make it and keep going forward, that just gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel good about what I was doing. So I just kind of stayed in that pocket and rode it out till my time was up.”
It’s not the first time someone with a Pittsburgh connection participated in “The Masked Singer.” Former Steelers Terry Bradshaw and Antonio Brown both made appearances as a deer and hippo, respectively, in 2019 and Pine native Jackie Evancho went on as a cat in spring 2020.
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: May 27, 2021, 4:10 p.m.
