DJ Khaled is more like a general manager for a sports team than anything else. On his latest album, We The Best, he’s certainly not a player (he doesn’t rap) and can hardly be considered the coach (he only produced two of the album’s 12 tracks). What Khaled has done on this project is assemble a group of players and let them loose on the field, only peering out of his skybox to shout phrases like “listennn!” and “we the BEST!” The team itself is pretty talented. Jadakiss, Fat Joe, Lil’ Wayne and Rick Ross make appearances and there is production from Cool & Dre and The Runners. Even so, the roster only delivers a few hits and a lot of misses.
Unless you haven’t listened to the radio at all in the last month, you’ve heard the album’s best song, “We Takin’ Over.” Hook-master Akon appears over Danja’s repetitive, high-pitched synths, and there are strong verses from T.I., Fat Joe, Birdman and Lil’ Wayne. Weezy steals the show, spitting, “I am the beast/ Feed me rappers or feed me beats/ I’m untamed, I need a leash/ I’m insane, I need a shrink.”
A similar cast appears on the Cool & Dre-produced “Brown Paper Bag.” Young Jeezy, Julez Santana team up with Ross, Joe and Wayne on the ode to acquiring funds illegally. Santana raps, “Can’t even relax in my room/ That brown paper bag money push my mattress threw the roof.” The two aforementioned songs appear third and fourth on the album and that’s pretty much where the fun ends. “New York,” featuring Ja Rule, Jadakiss, and Fat Joe, rekindles none of the magic from the 2004 hit of the same name.
It’s lazy hook and uninspired verses are barely even mixtape-worthy. And while Jada and The Game deliver solid verses on “I’m From the Ghetto,” the song itself is trite and overly long, with Khaled yapping over the beat well after the song has ended. In fact, the final three songs average around six minutes in length. The fact that the album’s not all that special doesn’t really reflect poorly on Khaled, though. After all, he had little to do with the project. The Miami native clearly has connections, but any musical skill he might have certainly isn’t on display here. There is no real theme to this album, which comes off sounding a lot more like a very average mixtape than anything else.
We The Best features several Miami artists like Ross, Trick Daddy and T-Pain, which makes an appearance by Beanie Sigel and the previously mentioned “New York” track seem out of place. The couple hits are entertaining, but for the most part, the album is filler. Khaled didn’t do as much as he could have given the talent he worked with.
by Andrew Kahn
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