DJ Khaled will go to great lengths to secure a hit record.
On the latest episode of Drink Champs, the Grammy-winning producer spoke about his 2017 smash “Wild Thoughts,” featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. The 46-year-old confirmed he had locked down Tiller’s verse before the pop superstar got on the cut and changed its sound.
“RiRi jumped on it—thank god. Dream come true,” Khaled said. “RirI loved the record. We got a hit. I’ll never forget, RiRi changed the pitch of the record. She changed the pitch to make it her [own]. When you’re a great artist you make records your own. And she’s an icon, she’s a great artist, so she she put her passion to it and pitched the record up, which was genius.”
Khaled hit up then-24-year-old Tiller to tell him Rihanna’s vocals had come in and they needed to revise Bryson’s work to accommodate to the new sound. Khaled said Tiller agreed, but failed to submit the recording in a timely manner, which caused him concern.
“I’m calling Bryson, my album come out in like in two weeks,” he recalled starting around the 1:43:00 mark above. “‘Yo bro, I need you need to cut the vocals over. You know that Rihanna’s vocals is in, you hear that, right? Everybody’s excited.’ He’s not picking up his phone. … I need this done. I got fuckin’ Rihanna vocals. The biggest record of my—one of my biggest records in my career. He not picking up the phone.”
Khaled decided to hop in his car and drive to Tiller’s home and did everything in his power to get the artist’s attention. “He has a gate. I’m flashing my lights, honking my horns, sending texts. Nobody’s replying,” he said. “You think I’m playing with this shit? One thing about me, anybody know me I don’t play no games. … Eventually, shout out to Rich the Barber, he comes outside, Bryson comes out, they open the gate—I was already climbing the gate,” he continued, prompting more laughter. “You think I’m playing? Ask them. Call them. … Get their version, it might be more intense.”
Tiller ultimately came through, but Khaled was still confused as to why he hadn’t returned any of his calls. It wasn’t until later that he learned Tiller was busy working on his surprise album True to Self. “Wild Thoughts” wound up hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Tiller’s first top-10 entry.
Talking about his upcoming 13th studio album God Did, Khaled was bursting with excitement—yet tight-lipped, despite drinking nearly countless shots—about the Jay-Z material fans are about to receive, saying Hov is on the album opener.
“I pinch myself every time I hear it. … Really, like this is a gift to the world,” DJ Khaled said, declining to reveal what other artists appear alongside Jay. He went on to boast, “If he put a greatest hits out, he gonna put this on there. Like it’s gonna be one of them. It feels like that. I’ma let y’all say it.
He also all but confirmed Drake is set to appear on plural tracks, rather than just the Lil Baby-assisted single “Staying Alive.”
Elsewhere Khaled spoke about how he wants to reconnect with his “All I Do Is Win” collaborator T-Pain and recently started communicating with Dr. Dre about a potential first-ever collab. He also reflected on how Kanye West paid for the “Grammy Family” video to do Khaled a solid early in his career.
God Did hits Friday, Aug. 26.