The words he chose were simple and brutal.

'Today my father decided not to wake up,'Wiz Khalifawrote to his 36 million followers. No build‑up, no black‑and‑white photo, just a sentence that sounded as if it had been pulled straight out of the moment he heard the news.

In a few lines on X (formerlyTwitter), the rapper born Cameron Jibril Thomaz confirmed what fans had already begun to fear: Laurence W. Thomaz, the U.S. Air Force veteran who raised him across bases and broken marriages and early mixtapes, was gone.

'I will always love him, miss him and be greatful for the things he taught me,' Wiz added, misspelling 'grateful' in a way that made the post feel unedited, uncomposed. 'He went out like a true yogi, at peace and on his own time. I love you forever Laurence W. Thomaz.'

Within minutes the replies filled with condolences, prayer emojis and the usual internet noise. Underneath all that, though, lay a quieter question that doesn't fit easily into 280 characters: who, exactly, was the man the world only really knew as 'Wiz Khalifa's dad'?

Today my father decided not to wake up. I will always love him, miss him and be greatful for the things he taught me. He went out like a true yogi, at peace and on his own time. I love you forever Laurence W. Thomaz.

Laurence W. Thomaz was never a public figure in his own right. There were no tell‑all interviews, no reality shows, no memoir. But to understand why his death has hit hip‑hop in a way that feels personal, you have to trace the outline of the life he did have.

Thomaz served in the United States Air Force, as did Wiz's mother, Peachie Wimbush. Their careers meant the family bounced from base to base when Wiz was small –Germany, the UK, Japan – before he eventually settled in Pittsburgh, the city he still reflexively shouts out on stage.

The marriage did not survive the logistics. Thomaz and Wimbush divorced when their son was about two. By most accounts, though, this was not one of those splits that left a parent as a ghost. Wiz has said repeatedly that both mother and father stayed in his life; what didn't survive was any ability to be in the same room together.

'My parents were divorced since I was 2, and I had both of them in my life. Love my mother, love my dad, but they can't be in the same room together, and that's not good for a kid,' he told N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN onDrink Champsin 2023. 'It's not their fault because they probably didn't grow up seeing the best functioning anything.'

Source: International Business Times UK