DJ Khaled Tried Climbing the Gate at Bryson Tiller’s House to Get Him to Record ‘Wild Thoughts’
DJ Khaled has worked with many of the biggest names in the music industry over the years, and produced many hit songs with his collaborators. In the summer of 2017, he teamed up with Rihanna and Bryson Tiller for “Wild Thoughts.” And while one would think locking in Rihanna for a collab would be the hardest part, it was actually getting Tiller to record his part that proved to be a problem for Khaled.
Rihanna recorded her ‘Wild Thoughts’ vocals and changed the pitch of the song
Khaled reflected on “Wild Thoughts” and several other moments from his career in an August 2022 episode of Drink Champs. He had actually gotten Tiller’s vocals before Rihanna jumped on the track, but her singing required Khaled to change the pitch of the song.
“RiRi jumped on it—thank god. Dream come true,” Khaled said. “RiRi loved the record. We got a hit. I’ll never forget, RiRi changed the pitch of the record. She changed the pitch to make it her [own]. When you’re a great artist you make records your own. And she’s an icon, she’s a great artist, so she she put her passion to it and pitched the record up, which was genius.”
Because the sound of the song had changed, Khaled reached out to Tiller to tell him that they needed to alter his vocals after Rihanna laid hers down on the track. Tiller initially agreed to change his part, but didn’t get back to Khaled with his new recording quickly.
DJ Khaled tried to climb Bryson Tiller’s gate
Khaled recounted how he had to go to extreme measures to get Tiller to send him his vocals for “Wild Thoughts.”
“I’m calling Bryson, my album come out in like in two weeks,” he remembered. “‘Yo bro, I need you need to cut the vocals over. You know that Rihanna’s vocals is in, you hear that, right? Everybody’s excited.’”
“He’s not picking up his phone,” Khaled continued. “I need this done. I got f***in’ Rihanna vocals. … One of my biggest records in my career. He not picking up the phone.”
Determined to get Tiller’s vocals, Khaled jumped in his car and drove to Tiller’s home himself. When he couldn’t get in to the property, he began making noise from outside.
“He has a gate. I’m flashing my lights, honking my horns, sending texts. Nobody’s replying,” he said. “One thing about me, anybody know me, I don’t play no games.”
After a while, Tiller appeared, just as Khaled was in the midst of scaling the gate himself. “Bryson comes out, they open the gate — I was already climbing the gate,” he said. “You think I’m playing? Ask them. Call them. … Get their version, it might be more intense.”
The song was a smash
“Wild Thoughts” became a song of the summer in 2017, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart behind Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber‘s “Despacito.” It was Tiller’s first top-10 hit of his career.
The song, which sampled Santana’s 1999 hit “Maria Maria,” earned praise from Carlos Santana himself.
“There is a reason that the infectious groove/theme that [songwriter] Wyclef [Jean] and I created on ‘Maria Maria’ still resonates today. It speaks to the heart,” he said. “DJ Khaled, Rihanna and Bryson take that vibe and bring it to a new dimension with ‘Wild Thoughts,’ but the groove and essence of the song is still intact.”
