We Ah Di Best: DJ Khaled x Mavado Medley Video + Khaled’s Reggae Roots

Words by Jesse Serwer—

As you may have heard, Mavado has joined DJ Khaled’s We the Best Music Group and, by extension, the YMCMB empire. After releasing his first track through the new situation in December, “Emergency,” Mavado is featured on a pair of tunes from Khaled’s Kiss the Ring, which drops tomorrow. “Suicidal Thoughts” and “Actionpak,” gathered here in a new medley video with cameos from Birdman and a surprisingly silent Khaled, fall at opposite ends of the spectrum musically. The Boi-1da-produced “Suicidal Thoughts” is a hip-hop track with big, up-front drums while “Action Pak” is some straight up dancehall business. Watch the clip below:

While this marks the first time Khaled has featured a dancehall act on one of his compilation albums, it’s hardly his first venture into the style. The New Orleans-born Khaled launched himself in Miami as a DJ for reggae station 96 Mixx before making the jump to 99 Jamz and a career as hip-hop’s foremost assembler of posse cuts, and loudest/most ubiquitous professional hype man. In fact, Khaled made one of his first ever appearances on wax on one of our all-time favorite dancehall albums, Bounty Killer’s Ghetto Dictionary: The Art of War. Listen to Khaled (billed as DJ “Kalid”) hype up the Five-Star General on the intro cut “Bring the World On,” waxing rapturously about Bounty’s live performance prowess before noting, “Them other punks they some war ladies…Bounty Killer is the warlord.”