On stage at the VMAs this year, clad in an ash-gray suit with slime-green sneakers, DJ Khaled couldn’t stop screaming. He and Offset were there to present the contenders for the Best Collaboration award. Khaled is arguably the person best qualified for this gig, given that he’s built a musical empire by recruiting big names to hop on his beats. But instead of offering any insight into the logic behind his vast catalog of all-star team-ups, every few seconds, he squinted at the crowd and bellowed the title of his new album: “GOD DID!” The moment went viral, as DJ Khaled appearances tend to do; being a meme has often eclipsed his music. At least this time he wasn’t also getting slimed.
This is what we’ve come to expect from DJ Khaled: excess, repetition, excessive repetition. He makes catchphrases first, songs second, and in the 15 years since he started releasing music, his signature mantras and affirmations—another one, major key, we the best—have stuck harder than most of his actual songs. His past three albums, in particular, were stuffed with paint-by-numbers hip-hop, full of juddering bass and air horns. Khaled operates more like a party planner than a producer: He knows who to invite, and what’s required to set the mood, all while recognizing that his own appearance will never be the main attraction. Frequently, the only way to identify a DJ Khaled track is hearing him shouting his own name. He stays in the background for most of God Did’s 18 tracks—but once in a while, he finally tiptoes out of his usual templates. It’s not enough to salvage a bogged-down album, but coming from him, even a little experimentation is surprising.
Rather than kicking off the record with a grandiose inspirational message, as he’s often done in the past, Khaled saves it for the outro and introduces God Did with less than a minute of Drake at his pettiest. “They act like we friends/Whole time is pretend,” Drake sings over delicate music-box synths, with no corkboard affirmations in sight. It’s an elegant diversion from Khaled’s standard, thump-focused fare, which makes it all the more overwhelming when the title track barrels in. “God Did” is an eight-and-a-half-minute exercise in bombast: screeching tires, spiraling electric guitar, the back-to-back steamroll of Rick Ross handing off to Lil Wayne handing off to four straight minutes of Jay-Z. Jay’s sprawling verse should be its own track—even the joy of hearing him brag about monogrammed pockets and “pushin’ Fenty like fentanyl” wears out eventually—but “God Did” is ambitious, the first time since Khaled’s early records that he’s reached for actual grandness, instead of empty proclamations of it.
Khaled is a savvy curator; too often, that’s all he is. God Did offers the rare opportunity to isolate what, exactly, DJ Khaled adds to a track. He stitches a snippet from the Lox vs. Dipset Verzuz battle into an interlude with Jadakiss, and the shouts of the crowd invigorate a stretch of sterile, focus-tested songs. Khaled’s craft is clearest in his remix of Kanye West’s “Use This Gospel.” He updates the 2019 track with an Eminem verse that slots easily over chiming bells and rolling drums, raps sputtering into hyperspeed. It spins out into a bass drop, turning a pensive song from Jesus Is King into a banger to wake up a party, or at least something to blast at the gym.
All-purpose intensity is the appeal of Khaled’s albums, which have the subtlety of shotgunning a Red Bull. Many of the tracks on God Did can’t sustain the energy, though. Two out of three Migos phone it in on “Party,” opening with energetic ad-libs that peter out conspicuously. Gunna and Roddy Ricch wilt on “Fam Good, We Good,” sounding bored by the time they reach the chorus. Even Lil Baby can’t resuscitate “Big Time” from a plodding beat and the absurdity of Future’s very first line: “Rainbow Audemars ’cause my bitch bisexual.” “Staying Alive” unfolds like a caricature of a Khaled song, ticking off the requisite expensive sample as Drake interpolates the Bee Gees through Auto-Tune.
Some of the album’s most appealing melodies and hooks seem more incidental than intentional, the logical outcome of combining stars and beats, then backing away. Restraint can pay off—the late Juice WRLD shines on a track that’s just him, and 21 Savage could rap over an iPhone alarm—but you’re left wondering what could happen if Khaled took a more active role. Putting Latto and City Girls on the same track is a winning idea, but on “Bills Paid,” their verses are cordoned off from each other. SZA gets confined to the chorus on “Beautiful,” when she could’ve added zest to Future’s croaky raps about eating shrooms and burning sage. What would a DJ Khaled album sound like if he were more director than set decorator, if he harnessed the power of collaboration to push artists beyond their comfort zones? In a few moments, God Did hints at the possibilities. But when it comes down to offering new wisdom or proudly repeating the tried-and-true, we already know where DJ Khaled stands.
