Khaled’s positivity is unwavering and, ultimately, irresistible. If somebody thinks I’m selling something, just know I only represent the best.” “No I’m being real! You’re gonna love it!” Back in the Wraith, he looks me in the eye and says, with passion: “Everything you see me promote, I love it. I imagine the person on the other end asks him if he’s serious. “You gotta taste this gum, it’s the most amazing gum!” he evangelises. The moment the interview’s over, Khaled is pacing about on the phone once more. When your life is being constantly relayed to millions of fans, there’s little space for other interaction. He takes it wordlessly, without looking up from his screen. There’s a stack of water bottles beside me. I look over to his crew, but they’re so engrossed in arranging bottles of Khaled-endorsed cognac they don’t hear him. Our next stop is Sony, where a waiting French film crew stare morosely as Khaled begins making phone calls. He shrugs again, lifts his phone, and with that, several million followers witness their man voice his support for the world’s leading liberal newspaper: “Guardian. That’s what we work hard for, a light for your greatness.” Since he’s on his phone anyway, I ask him if he feels like doing a Snap right now, in the back of the Wraith. “Obviously I’ll always be putting out great music and I’ve been a hard-working mogul my whole career, but now with Snapchat, it just shone more light on everything we’re doing. “It connected, everything connected,” he says, during our interview in the back of the Wraith, for much of which he’s glued to the phone. For Khaled, there’s scant difference between shilling gum on Snapchat and getting in the studio. I do it all.” And in a post-Kardashian world “doing it all” means a total assimilation of self and brand.
“I just feel like I’m a music man in full form,” he shrugs, “because my hand’s on not just making the music and being part of the creative, but also putting the music out.
Still, he’s not inclined to reflect on these contradictions. Khaled’s newfound social media virality may rely on absurdity – he once Snapped getting lost on a jetski while whizzing back from Rick Ross’s private island recently he announced that he’ll Snapchat the birth of his child in November – but his career is longstanding and legitimate. The biggest hip-hop star in the world is also now Khaled’s manager. Jay not only gave him two verses, but ended up directing the video, a montage of prison cells, stand-offs and a suited Jay, Khaled and Atlanta trap mainstay Future, shot in black and white. His hustle remains just as relentless: he moved to New York last year for 12 months, just to get a verse from Jay Z for his recent single, I Got The Keys. Born Khaled bin Abdul Khaled to Palestinian parents in New Orleans, Khaled got his break on pirate radio in Miami, where he’d broadcast until late, sleep on the floor for a few hours and then wake up and begin shouting into the mic again. Unlike them, though, Khaled knows what he’s doing. This is a ripe moment for slogan-spouting personalities who have levied buffoonery into bewildering heights of power – consider, after all, the jokes-made-real of Boris Johnson or Donald Trump. In these moments he can appear faintly cross-eyed. If someone says his name with enough force and conviction, he’ll glance up and switch on a brief, dazed smile at whoever happens to be closest. Dressed in black sweatpants, hoodie and some heavy duty ice, he walks at a lilting shuffle, permanently engrossed in his phone. In his tracks and on social media, Khaled’s affirmations have the same all-caps hype-man urgency. In the green room, he plays back his Snaps after he makes them, his words recorded and replayed until it starts to feel like an echo chamber of bromidic brainwash.
Music Choice has written him a script but it could just as well have used They Don’t Want You To Win, an online quote generator that spews Khaled gems ad infinitum.
At TV and web channel Music Choice, Khaled films the segment Wise Words, a stream of motivational messages delivered to camera. Today, on a full schedule of promo for his ninth studio album, Major Key, I get to do just that. Maybe that’s because he’s much like a motivational speaker, fond of inviting fans to “ride wit me through the journey of more success”.