God Did

God Did (stylized in all caps) is the thirteenth studio album by American disc jockey and record producer DJ Khaled. It was released on August 26, 2022, by We the Best Music Group and Epic Records. The record project earned five nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, including for Best Rap Album, and Song of the Year and Best Rap Song for the title track, featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend and Fridayy.

The project serves as the follow-up to his previous album, Khaled Khaled, released a year prior. It features guest appearances from Drake, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend, Fridayy, Kanye West, Eminem, Future, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, 21 Savage, Roddy Ricch, Quavo, Takeoff, SZA, Nardo Wick, Kodak Black, Don Toliver, Travis Scott, Gunna, Latto, City Girls, Skillibeng, Buju Banton, Capleton, Bounty Killer, Sizzla, Jadakiss, Vory, and Juice WRLD.

The album sees Khaled return to a more hip-hop-oriented approach, having courted pop prestige via features from Justin Bieber and Justin Timberlake among others on his previous album. It was supported by two singles: the Drake and Lil Baby-assisted "Staying Alive", and the Future and Lil Baby-assisted "Big Time".

Background
According to Khaled, the album thematizes the constant quest to relate to and praise a higher God for believing in him when others did not and he has been very open and proudly admitted to being a Muslim who habitually prays. "God has always told me to keep going; [...] When times get hard, I go harder. When times get great, I go even harder. I don't waste my emotions and energy on moving backwards. I use my energy to find the solution to keep going. If something ain't workin' out the way it's supposed to work out, [...] I want to find a way to get back up and keep going and find the solution."

Critical reception
God Did received generally mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. HipHopDX called the album “an unexpectedly, confusingly good collection of rap songs”. The magazine also praised the album as “one of the most well constructed albums the 46-year-old record executive has ever released”. It reserved special praise for the tracks “Party”, “Beautiful”, “Way Past Luck” and “JuiceWrld Did”. Clash called the album “incredibly entertaining”. In particular, Jay-Z's performance on the track "God Did" received critical acclaim. Simon Vozick-Levinson of Rolling Stone called the verse "a master class in mature lyricism", while Complex wrote that "the long-teased verse is a reminder that he's still an exceptional writer" and that "this verse will definitely go down among Jay-Z's best". An Ambrosia For Heads article called Jay-Z's verse the best verse of 2022. The project earned five nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, including for Best Rap Album, and Song of the Year and Best Rap Song for the title track.

However, Clash also called the album a "bombastic return from the hip-hop high-roller". Dani Blum of Pitchfork described the project as a "bogged-down album" in which "some of the album’s most appealing melodies and hooks seem more incidental than intentional, the logical outcome of combining stars and beats, then backing away". Blum characterized DJ Khaled as incompetent to harness "the power of collaboration to push artists beyond their comfort zones", with the exception of the title track with Jay-Z, which was praised as "ambitious". On Metacritic, based on 6 reviews, the album received a score of 43, the lowest of Khaled's career.

Commercial performance
God Did debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, earning 107,500 album-equivalent units (including 9,500 copies in pure album sales) in its first week.