‘Grateful’ is 90 minutes of pain
DJ Khaled overloads his album with guests and all of his singles
To all the readers confused by the headline, yes, DJ Khaled does release albums. His songs, many featuring lineups of famous musicians bigger than most Grammys telecasts, don’t just exist as a constant stream of singles on the radio. Khaled releases entire albums of these kinds of songs, some of which are destined to be hits.
So, what do the Khaled songs that never make it to the radio sound like? His new album, Grate
ful, is full of them, spanning 23 tracks and an exhausting 90 minutes. And considering that Khaled stacks all his previous 2017 singles — Shining, To the Max, I’m the One and Wild Thoughts — within the album’s first five songs, is it worth even listening past that point? As any listener who tries to make it to the end of Grateful will find out, the time would’ve been better spent just listening to the album’s singles on loop, or Khaled’s previous hits, or anything else other than the bloated tracks that populate the album.
Still, some of Grateful’s singles are among his best. Khaled tricked everyone into thinking I’m the
One would be his 2017 summer smash, then waiting until late June to drop the album’s real superstar. Wild Thoughts features the inspired pairing of Rihanna and Santana. I’m the One is the music equivalent of a vending-machine rubber bouncy ball, providing lowestcommon-denominator fun.
Beyond the other advance singles, To the Max (featuring Drake) and the Beyoncé/Jay-Z
Shining, the majority of Grateful’s finest moments come courtesy of the veterans on the album. Pusha T’s Good Man performance is among the album’s best, Fat Joe and Raekwon elevate Billy Ocean,
and Nas’ talents deserved better than his mindless Travis Scott collaboration It’s Secured.
Scott appears on one mediocre chorus after another, and the rest of rap’s younger generation flail along with with him. Future giveth and Future taketh away, helping birth the rap flutes trend with
Mask Off and putting the final nail in its coffin with I Can’t Even Lie’s wimpy sound effects.
Even Chance the Rapper can’t catch a break. I Love You So Much descends into parody when he starts singing the letters of the alphabet. And then there’s On
Everything, which delivers the Julie Andrews/DJ Khaled collaboration that nobody asked for.
Down for Life, featuring the album’s longest guest list — Future, Kodak Black, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Rick Ross and Scott — is possibly the most generic DJ Khaled song, a paint-by-numbers representation of his music.
Listeners should have known from the first track that they were in for a slog. (Intro) I’m So Grate
ful sounds like a rejected Summer Olympics theme song even before it gets to Khaled’s spoken-word section, where he thanks God, his son, and all his enemies who turned their backs on him. Maybe his enemies had the right idea.