Miami Living Magazine

Jason George

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Turn on the radio and you're guaranteed to hear one —if not many— popular songs, with great hooks, and incredible beats, that you know and love to sing along to. Naturally, you might pay attention to Lady Gaga's interesting lyrics or rock out to Austin Mahone's fun, pop vibe, but making this all happen, behind the scenes, is Nadir Khayat, better known as RedOne. And very soon, you'll be hearing the Grammy Award-winning artist on the radio, premiering his first single, "Boom Boom." That's right, the Moroccan record producer-singer-songwriter-record executive is lending his voice to a song of his own —a giant step in the progression of his solo career. The track has big-time collaborators that include, Daddy Yankee, French Montana, and Dinah Jane of Fifth Harmony, and is already gaining tons of traction with over 110 million views on YouTube and making Spotify's "Top Ten" chart. The song, RedOne mentions, had a very urban pop feel to it at first. Both French Montana and Dinah loved it, so they each came by and recorded on the track. "As we were working on the song, we really liked the Reggaeton vibe we were getting. Then I thought, What if we have someone like Daddy Yankee on this? We were huge fans of each other and once we got into the studio, we were having so much fun with it. The song originally had another title, but we couldn't get Boom Boom out of our heads, so Boom Boom stuck." The single, which hasn't even really started circulating over the airwaves yet, has a pretty impressive video to accompany it, which was shot in Morocco. "I wanted to show that to the world and this was the perfect opportunity. I invited a lot of social influencers and it was like one big party. We had a lot of fun!" You could call him a triple threat, but you probably wouldn't be giving him enough credit. "Growing up in a family of nine siblings, there was always lots of love and lots of music. All of my siblings introduced me to such a diverse amount of music: rock, soul, Moroccan, Arabic —you name it. The whole time, I was learning without even realizing it." So much so, that at the age of 19, after a lot of convincing to his parents, he travelled to Sweden to pursue music. "At first, my family thought I was crazy and young, but they let me go and they never stopped supporting me. It was very tough at first. I didn't have money. I slept on floors. But that's what you do when you have a dream." He started by singing and playing guitar in various local rock bands for about four years from 1991 to 1995. While there, he also acquired Swedish citizenship by naturalization. But one thing was for certain, focusing solely on one of his many talents and interests, just wasn't going to cut it. "I noticed, even from a young age, I couldn't really stick to one thing. Even now, I have too much going on in my head. I love being able to work with all types of styles. There are no limitations and that really fits me." RedOne began gaining recognition for his work on the two songs he wrote for Daniel Lindström's self-titled chart-topping album, "Break Free" and "My Love Won't

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