Producer and DJ, DJ Khaled’s highly anticipated album, Grateful was released on the 23rd June 2017, however, according to the 41-year-old record producer the album featuring an outrageous amount of guest including Drake, Rihanna and Beyoncé was down to his eight-month old son and executive producer, Ashad. The album is definitely not short of guests, and already has a handful of summer anthems including, “I’m The One” and “Wild Thoughts.”
Nevertheless, many critics have dubbed Khaled’s creations as disappointing due to his inane shout-out of, “we the best music” or, “another one.” But, it is safe to say that the album is legendary, in more ways than one.
The most successful single so far relies heavily on a sample of Santana’s “Maria Maria” from 1999, teamed together with Bryson Tiller and pop princess Rihanna. Rihanna makes the single into her own and almost overpowers Tiller and Khaled with her vibrant attitude, sensual vocal range paired with a colourful, vivacious and pulsating music video. The perfect summer anthem has been made.
The anthem is almost a repeat of last years summer anthem of “wu wu wu” “Work” closely followed by her “wa wa wa wild thoughts,” but, not as annoying…
This is easily one of the best samples of a song I have heard and although it is not as good as the original it will help the album climb those all important music charts.
Surprisingly, another song to note is the intro, which features the Jamaican artist, Sizzla, who sprouts insane falsetto, breathless vocals, even though the song, “(Intro) I’m So Grateful,” has no direct correlation with the rest of the singles on the album, it is defiantly one of the most memorable.
The single takes a while to pick up but once it does, it is the epitome of DJ Khaled’s infamous snapchat videos.
However, Grateful is at its best when kept simple which is proven with track 14 of 22, “Good Man.” The track is like a cool breeze through a hot desert. The beat is menacing and will have fans screaming for that Pusha T album even more than before.
However, many have claimed that the song feels unfinished and felt that the two just threw the verses together and decided to make the song for the sake of the album, making the song average, even though different from the rest of the singles.
Dj Khaled’s 10th album was initially supposed to top the charts and smash multiple records considering the immense hype surrounding the album, bearing in mind its insane celeb feature list, however, critics are not relatively in love with his latest project.
Nevertheless, it is all about how fans review the album and even though it is not set to break major records as an album collectively, singles such as “Wild Thoughts,” “I’m The One”and “Shining,” have proved that the album will go down in history for providing us with some legendary songs.
DJ Khaled Grateful is out now via Epic Records. Purchase it on iTunes here.
Words By Hiba Hassan
