This past winter, DJ Khaled started an OnlyFans account with Fat Joe, continuing his recent campaign of total media saturation. Between his Snapchats, his advice book, the luxury furniture line (We the Best Home), the podcast, and his reinvention as a self-help guru, Khaled has spent the last decade in pursuit of constant virality, too in on the joke for it to be funny anymore. Following his motivational triumph routine in 2021 feels like discovering you still have the T-Pain app or Lil B’s Basedmojis on your phone—you remember why everyone found them amusing, but you’re a little embarrassed that you once did, too.
Buying into DJ Khaled’s shtick has never been a prerequisite for enjoying his music, though. He’s always taken a backseat to the collaborations he curates; and lately, he’s been less of a presence on his albums than ever—he doesn’t even shout or ad-lib much anymore, and that was his one thing. There’s a growing disconnect between Khaled the gregarious living meme and Khaled the auto-pilot behind star-studded rap albums with all the individuality of a Now That’s What I Call Music compilation. Khaled Khaled is his 12th record, and we’re so used to them by now that you can forget what a radical exercise they are: rap albums where the A&R rep is the star, unapologetic unit shifters that don’t even disguise their disinterest in artistry, cohesion, or substance.
Khaled’s albums weren’t always this cynical. His earliest records lovingly hyped his native Florida rap scene and other kindred pockets of the south. But over the years, he lost any sense of scene stewardship, and his purview expanded to include anything that sells—out went Trick Daddy and in came Justin Bieber, who joins 21 Savage on one of Khaled Khaled’s lowlights, “Let It Go,” recycling the summery, Bud Light Lime-A-Rita vibes of 2017’s “I’m The One.” Consider it one of Khaled’s unwritten keys: If it worked before, then repeat. It’s not for nothing that he’s made “Another one...” one of his guiding mantras.
Khaled’s aversion to risk is unrivaled: He gathers the biggest names in rap, then has them make the same music they’d record on their own anyway. Sometimes staying out of the way works—the album’s first two singles were just Drake solo tracks with Khaled’s name on them. But the returns are never more than the sum of the talent involved. Put Lil Durk and Lil Baby (in the first of his three features on the record) over a brass-knuckled Tay Keith beat on “Every Chance I Get,” and you get an undeniable banger. Weigh down H.E.R. with messy Migos and Meek Mill verses, and you’re cutting your losses.
Even Khaled Khaled’s boldest pairings don’t land, which speaks to how difficult it is to get excited about anything on a DJ Khaled tracklist at this point. A collab from former enemies Nas and Jay-Z was once a major event, but there’s no indication of their long history on the drowsy “Sorry Not Sorry.” Nobody’s trying to one-up anybody here; instead, the two weary icons rap about their recent investments like distant colleagues making labored small talk at a happy hour destined to end after one drink. Elsewhere, the record takes Khaled’s recent habit of obvious samples to obnoxious new extremes. The shrill guitars of Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” slash and claw a the Post Malone, Megan Thee Stallion, and DaBaby feature “I Did It” like the worst idea The Hood Internet ever had.
It’s the closer “Where You Come From,” with dancehall titans Buju Banton, Capleton, and Bounty Killer, that most stands out, and not only because it’s the album’s lone reggae track. It’s the one song that feels like it exists not out of Khaled’s unquenchable thirst for streams, but because he genuinely likes it—the album’s hardest track by a distance, it drips with fanboy enthusiasm. Khaled Khaled begs for a few more outliers like this, moments where Khaled tosses his market research out of the window and trusts his passions. As a public figure, DJ Khaled gives us so much of himself. On his records, he gives us so little.
Buy: Rough Trade
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