From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

DJ Khaled

DJ Khaled spins the records that keep South Florida popping. He makes some of them, too.

by Bob Weinberg

November 17 2004

DJ Khaled explodes from his chair as he greets a caller to the TakeOver, the show he co-hosts with the equally excitable K. Foxx Monday through Friday on 99 JAMZ (WEDR, 99.1-FM). "What's poppin', man?" he spits into the mike as cars zoom by the soundproofed window of the Cox Radio building off I-95 and Sheridan Street in Hollywood. The caller asks Khaled (rhymes with "salad") if he has listened to his tape yet. Of course, it's just one of countless such submissions the increasingly influential DJ receives, slipped to him at the clubs where he spins or sent to the radio station in manila envelopes marked to his attention and freighted with the dreams and expectations of aspiring hip-hop stars.

Ever the wily promoter, Khaled not unkindly says he has misplaced the tape, but tells the caller to bring him another copy Nov. 24 at The Mansion on South Beach. Of course, this is where Khaled will be hosting The Temple, his huge, all-star birthday bash, which has drawn as many as 4,000 hip-hop-loving partygoers per year since it began eight years ago and this year will feature performances by Fat Joe, Trick Daddy, Jadakiss and Ja Rule, among others.

"It's my job to hear the worst people and the greatest people," Khaled says, adding that he listens to every recording handed or sent to him. Whether this will still be possible a year from now is debatable, as the 28-year-old Miramar resident's star continues to rise in South Florida and beyond. Having won the title Best Hip-hop DJ in the United States last year at the Mix Show Power Summit in San Juan, Puerto Rico; produced hits at his studio, Jerusalem, for artists such as Wyclef Jean and Fat Joe; and gotten superstars such as P. Diddy, Lil Kim and DMX to play his birthday party, the man has more juice right now than Tropicana.

"I think he's just wired up from the inside with the artists," posits Jerry Rushin, general manager of 99 JAMZ. "I think he has an edge; I don't know what it is, but he knows everybody and everybody knows him. He's picked some winners at the club and at the station."

"Khaled breaks all big records," says PluzWun, a Fort Lauderdale rapper who works in promotions at 99 JAMZ and cites Pitbull and Dirt Bag as some of the artists Khaled has turned him onto. "He says what gets played. He plays something; two weeks later, it's everywhere else. He got it first. It's just how it works."

"He believes in what he's doing," says PluzWun's brother Rohan Sutherland, of Genesis Marketing, trying to explain what makes Khaled resonate with some 100,000 listeners in South Florida. "He made me start listening to Trick; he made me start listening to Fat Joe; he made me start listening to Trina. I didn't know who Jacki-O was till he started pumpin' her. Just his aggressiveness and enthusiasm for the artists … to me, there's no better DJ down here."

One of those artists Sutherland is glad to have Khaled pumping is R&B singer Natasha "Na'Sha" Watkins, the first artist signed to the South Florida-based Pure imprint. Having broken big in Columbus, Ohio, she'll have her coming-out party in Miami at his birthday event. "We're showing our love for her with some established artists so she can shine," says Khaled, who produced the single "Turn It Up" for the vocalist. "That's taking her to another level. So one day, when she sells 10 million records, she'll be like, 'I performed at The Temple.' "

While that may sound self-congratulatory, the DJ and producer has earned bragging rights with his involvement in one of hip-hop's current smash records. Although Khaled didn't produce the single, Terror Squad's "Lean Back" is the biggest record to come out of the DJ's studio. "We knew it was huge the minute we touched that record," Khaled says. "It was the energy. I was telling everybody, 'When we drop this record, it's going to be historical.' It's the biggest hip-hop record right now."

The DJ's hype and flash are evident in Khaled's conversation, a byproduct of his having had to fight for his props in a somewhat insular culture. Born Khaled Khaled in New Orleans, he's the son of Palestinian immigrants from Israel. While hip-hop may not be his birthright, he has made it his own, his raspy voice and manner of speech embracing the street vernacular in an unaffected way, down to punctuating his sentences with the ubiquitous, "Know what I'm sayin'?"

"I always had to prove something," he says, "My experience in this game is that I had to fight for everything. That never came easy for me. But when it came, it came with so much beauty, and people believed after that."

Moving from New Orleans to Orlando with his family at the age of 15, Khaled spun records on college radio and in nightclubs in both cities. He also got a taste for promotion, as he began renting out halls and charging $5 a head for the parties at which he served as MC.

Recognizing what he calls a "virgin" market for hip-hop in Miami, Khaled migrated south some eight years ago and dragged the music up from the underground. His popularity on underground radio -- and in the clubs of South Beach, where hip-hop was rarely heard -- forced South Florida mainstream radio stations to recognize the inevitability of the genre. Before long, 99 JAMZ program director Cedric Hollywood, who knew Khaled from Orlando, brought him to the station at which he's become a fixture.

"There's a tremendous battle in the urban or hip-hop arena taking place right now," WEDR's Rushin says. "And to have Khaled in position to work with me and my team is a great opportunity, and the timing couldn't be better. Everybody's trying to get the best troops they can."

Since Khaled's arrival, the Dirty South sound has become a major force in the hip-hop world, with Miami artists such as Trick Daddy and Pitbull finding audiences beyond state lines. Hell, Trick recently evaluated naked women on Howard Stern.

"Our sound is a little different than everybody else's sound," Khaled says, trying to define the Dirty South. "We got our own slang; we got our own production sound. We have this real gutter, hard sound, a real dirty sound that just reps Miami."

Khaled is quick to give credit where it's due, mentioning Luther "Luke" Campbell as an important figure in breaking South Florida as a hip-hop mecca in the '90s. "Luke was fast booty music," he relates. "The Dirty South sound is slow booty music. It's still the same drum sound, but it's just modified. Things change."

Another change Khaled notes is the impact Dirty South is having throughout the country. Gone, he says, are the geographic beefs of the '90s that, for example, pitted East Coast rappers against West Coast ones. Now, artists from Los Angeles and New York alike work with Dirty South performers and producers.

Khaled maintains connections with New York as a member of the Big Dawg Pitbulls, a national collective of DJs that's based in New York and run by Funkmaster Flex. He also travels to the Big Apple as a member of Terror Squad. Fat Joe, he says, is the first one who really believed in him, looked past his skin color and into his heart.

In fact, Fat Joe entrusted Khaled with production of the all-important intro track, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me," on the recent Terror Squad recording, True Story, which features a rap by R&B singer Tony Sunshine. "It's sayin' to the world, 'Yo, even my R&B singer can rap.' Like, 'We got this on lock. This is what we do,' " Khaled says. "It's what's so great about an introduction on an album; it gives you a chance to spit your feelings before you start the show."

"Even though the nightspot known as Opium may be his favorite place to club," MTV News reported online in August, "Fat Joe's favorite spot to hang out while in Miami is DJ Khaled's Jerusalem studio. It's the place where, he says, 'the magic is at.' "

That's also the reason the Bronx-born Latino rapper chose to record his soon-to-be-released solo album, Things of That Nature, at Jerusalem, enlisting the production talents of Khaled, as well as Scott Storch and Timbaland. Fat Joe credits Khaled with hooking him up with the latter. "I always said, 'What's up' to [Timbaland] for years, but we never really talked," he told www.rapbasement.com in August. "DJ Khaled was like, 'Yo, you and Tim really got to do a joint. He's a legend; you a legend. I think y'all can make some new shit.' "

Khaled is one of the privileged few allowed to sport the coveted gold TS medallion that marks him as a member of Terror Squad. "Everybody wants that TS piece," Fat Joe told Ozone magazine in July. "Some people have been down forever and don't get the chain. You have to earn and contribute to get the chain. Khaled deserves a TS piece a block long. … I love Khaled. I can count all the people I love on one hand. Whenever I'm stressed out and Joe Crack feels like the world is going wrong, Khaled is there for me."

On the Friday before Halloween, the 99 JAMZ offices are buzzing. Staffers and interns, some in costume, sip Heinekens or a special green "witches brew" of Hennessey and Hpnotiq as they flow in and out of the break room, its treat-laden tables lit only by candles. A young woman cradles what appears to be a baby, but on closer inspection turns out to be a potbellied pig in a devil's costume. A blue lipstick print adorns the sign for the ladies' room.

An hour before his show, a relaxed DJ Khaled sits down in one of the station's conference rooms to talk with a reporter. An ever-present BlackBerry buzzes constantly, but he generally gives it no more than a glance. Although he's wired into the new millennium, Khaled hasn't pulled the plug on the old one, and his T-shirt features an iron-on of Run-DMC. "We pay homage to those [who went before]," he declares. "We have to. If you don't, then you shouldn't be making music at all."

Besides old-school, Khaled professes much love for the music of Jamaica. The recent death of WLRN-FM's longtime Sounds of the Caribbean host Clint O'Neil, whom he calls a "legend," moved him deeply and he refers to his passing as "an enormous loss." In fact, Khaled frequently spins in Kingston, preferring the ghetto environs to the more-touristy resort areas. "In Jamaica, that's all they care about, their music," he says. "The poorest man is so happy because his music is playing. The richest man is happy because his music is playing. So it's all about the music. And the energy of the music is incredible."

Energy is a word that comes up quite often when discussing DJ Khaled. "A crazy-ass energy that's stupidly hype," Rushin gushes. "He's got a lot of energy, and it's contagious."

In the radio studio he shares with K. Foxx, Khaled chills as the music plays, sitting at a computer monitor he uses to surf the Internet and munching a cookie from the Halloween festivities. Right now, he and Foxx are spinning tunes from the station's playlist -- Nelly's "Flap Your Wings," Destiny's Child's "Lose Your Breath," a track by Ja Rule -- but from 9 to 10 p.m., Khaled is turned loose to make his own mix. Foxx is all efficiency, answering calls while the music plays, recording and editing the most entertaining ones to play on the air. An overhead Web cam captures it all for home viewers.

"It's Friday," Foxx greets a caller. "How ya feel?"

"Can you do me a favor?" the caller asks.

"Depends on what it is," she shoots back in a sultry voice. It turns out the guy is promoting a car show. Somebody is always promoting something and anxious to tap into TakeOver's loyal listenership.

"What's poppin'?" Khaled quizzes another caller.

"Well, darling, just listenin' to ju guys," the female caller replies, rolling her r's and exaggerating a Latin accent, prompting Khaled to ask if she's listening in Miami.

"Forget about Miami," she answers. "We from Hollywood."

KD, another DJ at the station, takes Khaled aside to create a promo for The Temple on a hand-held digital recorder. Like the pro he is, Khaled ramps up the excitement with each take, the names and details rolling off his tongue without pause: "Wednesday, Nov. 24, The Mansion, South Beach, DJ Khaled's birthday bash, a celebration of life and music. Fat Joe, Fabolous, Ja Rule, Trick Daddy -- I'm talkin' 'bout everybody gonna be there, know what I'm sayin'?"

If his 29th birthday party is this huge, one can only imagine what he'll do when he turns 30. At this point, Khaled says he's too stoked about this year's festivities even to think about the big 3-0 bash. He does admit he'd like to have "a few million in my pocket" and a place on the water by the time he rounds the digits. As for his dreams for the future, he lets out a long sigh.

"I got so many of them, man," he says. "My most important thing is just to be happy, have my family healthy and everybody good, and always take my music to a higher level, reinvent myself at all times. … I want to be the No. 1 DJ and stay the No. 1 DJ. Stayin' No. 1 is the hard part. It's work. It's easy to come up; it's just your determination. But you gotta make sure you're up forever."

The Temple, featuring performances by Fat Joe, Trick Daddy, Fabolous, Jadakiss, Ja Rule and Birdman, will take place 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 24 at The Mansion, 1235 Washington Ave., in Miami Beach. Admission is $40. Call 305/438-9488. To reserve a table, call 305/532-1525. DJ Khaled spins on 99 JAMZ (WEDR, 99.1-FM) 6-11 p.m. weekdays.