Major Key is DJ Khaleds ninth studio album in 10 years, and it’s undoubtedly his best. Depending where you stand on the Khaled spectrum, that may mean nothing or everything, but it should be noted thatits awards show lineup of guests accounted forthis is the most streamlined and focused album that he’s ever masterminded. Yes, he still swings for the fences too hard and too often, but he’s also become a more well-rounded player. The first five tracks of Major Keyfeaturing, Jay Z, Future, Drake, Nas, Big Sean, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Coleare the shrewd mix of some of the most respected craftsmen and hitmakers of the past 20 years and past 20 weeks alike. Sometimes, these songs work only because of Khaled: I Got the Keys is a sub-par Jay Z song and an okay Future song, but somehow emerges as a great Khaled song. Its not a number either artist would make on their own, or together without Khaled, whose motivational special talk peppers both stars verses.
Some songs seem to have nothing to do with Khaled. Nasover a filtered Fugees sample courtesy of Cool & Dreis forensic and poetic on Nas Album Done about the recirculation of the Black dollar; J. Cole is characteristically vulnerable, earnest, and weary about the personal and the political over a meditative thump provided by Khaled himself (on Jermaines Interlude); on Holy Key, Big Sean touches on everything from race and police violence to self-help ideology to Christianity to veganism, admirably doing his best to redeem himself from his Control (H.O.F.) roasting, but Kendrick Lamar spazzes with a technical and vocal madness that makes a line like hair like ODB seem like the most important and original rhyme in history. Theres also Betty Wright taking everyone to church the way only a 62-year-old soul singer who was dropping gold records on her own record label before her collaborators could walk can, and its all majestic.
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