DJ Khaled's Empty Optimism
Several centuries hence, as historians try to understand our strange cultural moment from their Martian ivory towers—beheading videos gone viral, presidential politics playing out on Twitter, cold-case murders solved on Reddit—they will come upon the curious case of Khaled Mohamed Khaled, much better known as DJ Khaled. They will discover that around the year 2016, the 41-year-old Palestinian-American was among the most famous people on the dying, desiccated planet known as Earth. Like a few of Khaled’s contemporaries, these scholars will be mystified by the source of his vast celebrity, which is tethered to no discernible achievement or body of work. It will take reams of academic holograms to settle on the consensus that DJ Khaled is the kind of jester every culture in decline requires to speak truth to fading power. Some will be distracted and amused, some will be horrified and perplexed, while the truly perspicacious will be packing their bags for the first shuttle to the Red Planet.
What, exactly, Khaled does is a matter of vigorous online debate. He has made rap music but does not actually rap, preferring to have vastly more talented associates to do the work for him—on one of his most popular tracks, ,” which has 70 million YouTube views, Khaled shouts his name a couple of times but otherwise mugs for the camera like a dispensable extra, leaving the work to T-Pain, Rick Ross, Ludacris and Snoop
