Words by Chris Yuscavage
Photos by Jimmy Fontaine
On a lazy Saturday afternoon in November, DJ Khalil is worried. “Someone cut the phone lines on my building last night to disarm the alarm,” Khalil says over the phone from his studio in midtown Los Angeles, where he’s currently polishing off projects for Game, Busta Rhymes, Bishop Lamont and Dr. Dre’s Detox. “Ummm…I need to figure out what happened. Can I call you right back?”
You’ll have to excuse Khalil Abdul-Rahman, 33, for being a little overprotective of his work. Five years ago, his biggest claim to fame was his production on Ras Kass’s ill-fated Van Gogh project on Priority Records (he produced both the title track and the Alchemist diss song “Kiss of Death”) and a bunch of work with West Coast underground stalwarts like the Visionaries, Planet Asia and his own group, Self Scientific, alongside rapper, Chase Infinite.
But in 2002, Brooklyn, a female MC signed to Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment, got a hold of one of Khalil’s beat CDs and the good Doctor asked to meet with the producer. “When I walked in, Dre was working on 50 Cent’s first album,” says Khalil, who moved from Seattle to Los Angeles when he was four after his ballplaying father Walt Hazzard was traded from the Sonics to the Lakers. “And then he started playing my beats! I mean, when I was younger, I had everything Dre touched and now I’m sitting next to him thinking, How crazy is this?”
Soon after, Dre offered DJ Khalil—who got his name after he started messing with turntables at 14—a staff producer position at Aftermath, where he’s parlayed his unorthodox style of blending everything from rock to jazz to classical music into placements on albums from Game (“Da Shit”), Jay-Z (“I Made It”) and most recently, 50 Cent (“I’ll Still Kill”). But even with all the sudden commercial success, Khalil isn’t ready to get comfortable just yet. “I’m still out here competing with the Kanye Wests and Just Blazes of the world,” he says, “but people are starting to recognize my sound so I’m going to take advantage of that.” So far, it’s exactly what the Doctor ordered.
