Khaled (album) - Mixed Opinions On Khaled's Westernness

Mixed Opinions On Khaled's Westernness

To make the album Khaled, the artist signed with the French record label Barclay Records and sought out American record producer Don Was. Upon meeting with Was, Khaled "asked (him) to incorporate American R&B—to Americanize the music," a request that Was obliged by combining Khaled's live musicians with loops and beats from his computer (a Macintosh) and a keyboard. The result of these sessions in the studio that combined Khaled's rai with Was' R&B, was, according to Was, "pretty wild music."

The response from his Arab fans was mixed. Many of the more conservative Arabs stopped buying his records and going to his concerts after Khaled offended them with his liberal Western-influenced words and actions in interviews and on television, not to mention with his deliberate "(selling) out to Western commercialism" through the changes in his music. However, Khaled's decision to mix his traditional style of Algerian raï with the slick production and Western beat patterns of American R&B stood out to some of his other fans as new, cool, and revolutionary and also made him plenty of new fans. The music from the album, especially "Didi," began to garner play in important places like French nightclubs and on Hip Hip Hourah, and the album began to sell well throughout France. The French emcee Malek Sultan of IAM even goes so far as to call Khaled the "Public Enemy Arabe," which demonstrates the respect that the French hip-hop scene has for the first raï artist to successfully cross over into the French pop market.