DJ Khaled has been a popular DJ, producer and artist for more than a decade, and has delivered some of the bigger summer anthems, R&B collaborations and guest features that the genre has seen over that span. However, it wasn’t the millions of singles he’s sold, or his widespread celebrity network that conferred Khaled–born Khaled Mohamed Khaled, so basically Khaled Khaled–this newfound level of fame. It was Snapchat. According to the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek (on which Khaled is the cover subject), DJ Khaled averages 6 million views per Snapchat story, which is a ridiculously remarkable amount of traction. His absurd videos and photos about getting lost at sea on a jet ski, or his motivational shower speeches (that’s not a metaphor, he literally delivers uplifting monologues as he lathers his beard with shampoo) have landed him homepage coverage on Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post and The New York Times, and that’s just to name a few. The most recent bit of press may be his most impressive: an interview with Ellen Degeneres on Ellen.
Above, you can watch the clip, which finds Khaled giving the daytime talk show host a quick synopsis of his philosophies, his rise from small-town Miami DJ to being managed by Jay Z, and his superfluous positivity, which his recent run can be accredited to.
