Khalid Is The Shooting Star Of The Playlist Era
In the spring of 2016, an A&R executive working for RCA Records named Tunji Balogun came across a song that had been uploaded onto SoundCloud a few months prior. It was called "Stuck On U," a wistful, folky but rap-aware two-and-a-half minutes written and performed — in one take, as its singer says at its opening — by a teenager already going by only his first name: Khalid.
"I followed him on Twitter," Balogun remembers. "He followed me back and I just started talking to him. He was in high school. It was early and I just was telling him — you know, giving him words of encouragement and letting him know, 'You're doing something really good here, man. This is extremely promising.' And like, 'I'm here if you need any help or any resources.'"
Around the same time, Khalid's music was heard by an artist manager named Courtney Stewart. "I was like, 'We need to get him to Atlanta as soon as possible,'" he says. Stewart flew Khalid out from El Paso, where he was a second semester senior. "[I] set up the first real session with him in the studio and I just saw him write two or three songs in front of my face that were, like, incredible."
One of those songs was "Location," tempered on top and nervy underneath. Utilizing several different means of expression concurrently, a few moods, it sounds like a risky text feels. Technically confident and projecting into the future. "He started writing that in that session," Stewart says.
