Album Review: Suffering from Success by DJ Khaled

Those who would accuse DJ Khaled of using an overly audacious album title for this seventh studio effort are quickly schooled once "Obama [Winning More Interlude]" hits the speakers. On the opening cut, real world audio of a national news broadcast finds America's 44th President entering an auditorium to the traditional "Hail to the Chief," but the music quickly switches to Khaled's platinum single "All I Do Is Win. " In true Presidential style, Obama steps on the song's hook, asking the audience "How do you like my new entrance music?" and they go wild, because Khaled won the popular vote for the United States' hypeman-in-chief, plus he's the czar of mainstream hip-hop compilations that just happen to be filled with new tracks.

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Through his networking prowess and an undeniable ear for mainstream radio trends, DJ Khaled has been directly responsible for placing 11 singles on Billboard magazine’s “Hot 100” chart since 2007’s Listennn…The Album. Suffice it to say that when the President of the United States uses your double platinum single as entrance music during a White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you’ve arrived. You can more or less set your calendar alert to DJ Khaled releasing a charting single from a new album each summer, and as his delayed Suffering From Success album hits shelves October 22, 2013, the Drake-assisted “No New Friends” sits at the #54 spot on the charts—having risen in the ranks over the last seven weeks.

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DJ Khaled is a talent aggregator. You can say what you will about his mantras or his never-ending quest to be an omnipresent figure in rap without actually rapping, but you can’t understate his value. He is the maestro behind many of rap’s best post-Napster posse cuts, and he assembles the biggest names in the hip-hop with relative ease, unlike anyone else in his field.

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What’s most apparent from DJ Khaled’s seventh record is the guy has a lot of friends. There are more high profile guests here than at a Kardashian wedding. The star power of over 20 MCs can’t obscure the overly familiar sonic palette used on many songs, with a reliance on trap beats and limited imagination. Some of the best tracks (“Hell’s Kitchen, “Never Surrender,” and “No New Friends”) veer from the blueprint and are driven by the sharp cameos from J.

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Affliction is a luxury, just another thing to flaunt, on “Suffering From Success,” the seventh album by DJ Khaled. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though it’s a minor deviation from the norm. DJ Khaled, 37, has been one of hip-hop’s most dogged purveyors of exultation, which is saying ….

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