What I listened with: Wireless Bluetooth Headphones
Editor Rating: 6/10
The Bottom Line: In terms of sales this album is Bonafide hit, but if you want Hip-Hop there is only 3 or 4 songs for you particularly (Billy Ocean, ft Fat Joe & Raekwon).DJ Khaled’s lawyers are the real MVP here for getting everything cleared
Snapchat, Snapchat, Snapchat DJ Khaled is obsessed, but it worked out and the Khaled family has become a marketing machine. Grateful was executive produced by his eight-month-old son, Asahd. To be fair, he’s brought together up the quite star-studded cast; – Nicki Minaj, Drake, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Rihanna. Clearly this album is designed for a Spotify playlist consisting of 23 tracks. The Highlight of the album include summer anthem Wild Thoughts (Rihanna luxuriating over Santana’s Maria Maria), Nobody Alicia Keys and Nicki Minaj team on this uplifting anthem, which deploys a Pastor T.L. Barrett sample masterfully. Nearly every song consists of a full sample from a classic song matched with amazing vocals, and song writings. If that isn’t enough we have to deal with Khaled’s inane shout outs of “another one” or “we the best music”, making you yearn for a Khaled-free version.
I don’t like criticizing DJ Khaled, because I love everything Khaled does I even watch his Snapchat almost every day. At this point time if Khaled mentions the name of your business on Snapchat you are guaranteed success. Now this Grateful is sort of loosely comprised like an original DJ Clue tape. A tape you could expect to laced with tracks from Lox, DMX, Nas, CNN, Fabolous and many more. The original playlist. Some of these tapes are actually on Spotify right now, and when I listen to them they are straight fire. When I listen to Grateful I feel cheated, I feel like the hit records were bought not created. I bring up the old DJ Clue mixtapes, because those were raw and timeless. The artists on there were hungry to be on top at the time. With Grateful every artist is on top, and the beats aren’t even original one of the lead singles has a full sample of Maria Maria. Anyone could’ve told you that Wild Thoughts would be a hit, and do you know why. Because, Maria, Maria was a hit when it first came out, and we add arguably the best singer right now with one of the best songwriters. Which makes me wonder what do we need Khaled for? Recruiting, is what we need from him.
Generally, Grateful ‘s major guests sound like they’re mailing it in. Migos sound weary on the inert “Major Bag Alert” — are there pop songs without Migos on them these days? — and Chance the Rapper’s rendition of the alphabet song on “I Love You So Much” won’t have much of an audience beyond the pre-K set. (In fact, the latter song is aimed at Chance’s young daughter and Khaled’s 8-month-old son, who executive-produced Grateful and, according to the Khaled, is “the reason all of this magic is happening.”) The second disc, which Khaled loaded with posse cuts featuring Southern trap artists like Future, 2 Chainz, and Gucci Mane, is a slog where none of the MCs tap into the excellence of their recent releases. On many of Grateful’s tracks, Khaled seems to have expended significant effort in recruiting talent and relatively little on soliciting creative performances.
Khaled’s ability to summon music’s Avengers remains unrivaled — Grateful‘s roster easily outstrips the ones Mike Will Made-It and 2 Chainz assembled for their 2017 albums. With his industry connections and cachet, he’s able to unite voices who otherwise might not appear on wax together. But with so much talent and so much content, it’s frustrating that he couldn’t deliver a higher-quality product.
