Las Vegas played host to the annual Electric Daisy Carnival this past weekend (June 16-18) — a three-day electronic music experience featuring artists like Diplo, Yellow Claw, Major Lazer, and many more. Among the who’s who lineup of EDM artists, DJ Khaled was scheduled to bless the audience with his chart-topping brand of uncontrollable hype. But things didn’t go as planned — and his set was eventually cut short after being fraught with technical difficulties.
Khaled, whose new album Grateful is virtually guaranteed to rock Billboard charts this summer after its June 23 release, took to Instagram to explain what happened. “They tried to sabotage my sound,” he claimed. “I still stood on stage wit no sound, and when they got the sound to work they want cut my set short … I still rep for my people,” he continued. “Anyone else would walk off stage.” The sound issues ended up eating up eight minutes of Yellow Claw’s performance, and a video has since circulated showing fans of the group booing Khaled.
As his second post shows, he tried to play to the situation, telling the audience, “They want to cut my shit … but this is California,” before 2Pac’s classic “California Love” came on — to the cheers of the seemingly engaged audience. However, at least one user was quick to point out that Las Vegas isn’t actually in California, but Nevada. Ouch.
While he still secured a bag for the performance, Khaled made it abundantly clear there were no hard feeling. “THEY DONT WANT US TO WIN SO WE WIN MORE FOR THERE HEAD TOP,” he wrote in all caps. “Love is the [key emoji] … I forgive them … love is always the answer!”
Khaled never defined who “they’ were at the event, but has traditionally characterized anyone who opposes his success with the pseudonym.
EDC doesn’t seem to have made an official public statement about the issues, either on their website or social media accounts.
Khaled, who revealed last week in an interview with Yahoo’s Katie Couric that he hopes to one day work with Eminem, is having a great run right now, despite this performance. So far, the first two singles from Grateful have made a splash, with “I’m The One” topping the Hot 100 chart and the Drake-featuring “To The Max” debuting at #53.
Check out some Twitter reactions from EDC below.
Not a fan, but I’ll even call BS. That spot is EDM central for trust fund babies, and a huge rivalry between the EDM DJs and artists. Do the research, you’ll see. Now it’s been a very difficult spot to bring Hip hop djs bc EDM djs make a killing there with what they’re paid, accommodations and all. This is obviously sabotage for an act trying to squeeze into EDM territory. Like I said, not a KHALED fan but I do know sabotage.
so this Bozo just dances around on stage screaming over other peoples songs? And he’s not even the one DJ’ing the actual records but he calls himself a DJ? LOL what a useless no talent waste of life. Khaled is the Paris Hilton of hip-hop. pure buffoonery
they dont want him tryng step into their shit
“Tried to sabotage my sound so many times”…. your sound? LOL your sound???? you was just spinning other cats records yelling your wack jibberish over top… no one is trying to hear that shit!! especially at an electronic festival… imagine being high as fuck and this doofus is on stage and wont stop shouting over the records he contributed nothing to
“IS CALIFORNIA UP IN HERE!?” This poor man doesn’t even know where he’s at.
Why would Insomniac (the company that puts on EDC and various other EDM festivals) pay what I’m assuming is a lot of money to bring DJ Khaled out just to sabotage him? The bottom line is, while I respect Khaled as a producer and businessman the man just is not a live entertainer. People at Coachella said he had one of the worst shows there and now he gets booed off stage at EDC. He doesn’t know how to put on a show and he isn’t even DJing, just being a hype man. I can tell you from experience that EDM fans usually hate hype men during sets, so if you’re just going to play hip hop and yell into the mic then the audience will not respond well to it.
It was a bad idea on both sides to begin with. He doesn’t fit the culture of EDC and he doesn’t know how to perform his music live for people yet. Honestly, if Insomniac wants to test these waters they would’ve been better off trying to book some big name rappers. I know there are several EDM festivals that do that and I know someone who did security at an event nearby that Carnage put on that had some other big EDM DJs like Marshmello and they had Mac Miller performing too. Khaled just was a bad idea.
BEST HIPHOPDX NEWS TITTLE EVER! SHOUT OUT Riley Wallace STILL LAUGHIN
You supposed to be a DJ fix your own sound