Over almost twenty years, DJ Khaled has lived in what has become a rare spot in contemporary music, not merely a producer or curator, but a gravitational force who is able to bring the culture to whatever moment it wishes to create. His releases are not silent releases, they come like events, with the weight of anticipation and the promise of magnitude. Not many individuals in the hip-hop world have perfected the ability to transform a drop of water into a community event, where the hype has become an integral part of the song. Khaled has never been blessed by beats only but the ability to see energy, bring voices together and turn motion into records to move through the club, the street, the timeline, and the radio every bit as much. The name has been synonymous with impact, year after year, era after era. The very same greatness, which his new single with Future and Lil Baby revives him with, makes him remember that the culture turns when Khaled moves.
Future, DJ Khaled and Lil Baby | SUPPLIED
The new record comes as the first big statement of the new album Aalam of God by Khaled (the next album is due out July 17) and it knows the job right away. This is not music that has been released to give the waters a trial, it is music that has been constructed to take charge. Khaled builds a record based on authority by combining Future and Lil Baby whose voices symbolize two sides of the rap supremacy. The single itself sounds as an introductory scene, created to inform that the following chapter of his catalog will be big, competitive and impossibly huge.
The song, “One of them” is sonically tilted towards pressure, as opposed to celebration. The recording is biased towards spooky keys, beefy drums, and a heightened feeling of space that lets each element strike with accuracy. Khaled has frequently triumphed with anthems that are oversized, but here moderation is the weapon. The beat breathes through tension, instead of bombarding the song with extra. The decision gives the record a more hardcore feel, and proves that scale does not necessarily need noise. In some cases, impact is made by being aware of when to strike and when to leave the silence suspended in the air.
DJ Khaled, Future and Lil Baby | SUPPLIED
Future comes into the song with the sort of command as easy as it has made him one of the architects of rap. His performance is fluid, near airless, but with the danger and swagger the instrumental requires. Lil Baby matches that power with a sense of urgency and technical sharpness, adding a more immediate intensity to the record. Their combination is not as much of a contest as it is of a filling out the design of the song. Future provides atmosphere, Lil Baby provides acceleration. Such a balance is the true talent of Khaled, and he understands not only who to call, but also how to make artists be in those situations where they cannot deny their talents.
“One Of Them,” is successful as a single piece on its own because it does all the things that a lead release is supposed to do and that is it builds a momentum, it refocuses attention, and it sets the stakes higher as to what comes next. It is not the most experimental of any of their records, but experimentation was never the thing. It is an announcement of being by a man who has spent decades being the creator of the moments larger than the music. In case this track happens to be the first message of Aalam of God, then July 17 is set not so much as a release date, but as the coming of another cultural event.
Words by Zimiso Nyamande
