Courtesy
DJ R3hab.
Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014 | 3:29 p.m.
DJ R3hab at Hakkasan Las Vegas in MGM Grand on Thursday, May 2, 2013.
We expect a costume out of superstar DJ and producer R3hab at Life in SLS Las Vegas on Friday night. But what does a person who takes the stage under an accepted alias wear as a costume?
“It will be something fun and funny,” promises R3hab, whose real name is the Halloweeen-esque Fadil El Ghoul. “I don’t want to give away the secret.” At the suggestion that maybe he should dress as Deadmau5, he laughed and said, “That costume is already taken.”
SLS is placing a lot of hope and emphasis on R3hab’s appearance this weekend, kicking off three nights of electronic dance music with Borgore on Saturday night and Richie Hawtin on Sunday. R3hab has appeared at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas and has thrice been honored by the International Dance Music Awards for Breakthrough Artist, Best Full-Length Mixer and Best Remixer.
He has appeared at such major music festivals as EDC New York, Coachella, Future Music Australia, Tomorrowland & TomorrowWorld, Ultra Music Festival, Made in America and Creamfield. As a producer, he has mixed for such contemporaries as Tiesto, Calvin Harris, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, David Guetta and Pitbull.
Long before he called himself R3hab, the budding DJ picked up the craft organically and electronically while working programs on a simple MacBook Pro.
“You no longer need a multimillion-dollar studio to create music,” says the 28-year-old resident of a small town in Holland. “If I had been born even a couple of years earlier, I might be doing something else.”
Over the past year, R3hab has reinforced a relationship with SLS parent company SBE, having appeared at EDM events at SLS South Beach and Create Nightclub in Los Angeles. His move to SLS Las Vegas is a significant tidal shift on the Strip, as R3hab had been a star at Hakkasan and Wet Republic at MGM Grand before it was announced Oct. 1 that he was moving to SLS.
“I am a big fan of SBE. We’ve done a couple of great shows in Miami and L.A. I like that they are young, fresh, new, interesting. I’m just very excited, and they are excited, that I am one of the first (resident) artists in Las Vegas. “
R3hab first visited Las Vegas three years ago and was “blown away” by the high caliber of entertainment in his culture of EDM and the overarching quality of service to tourists.
“Miami has rooms for $500 to $1,000 a night, and it is not on the amazing level of service you have in Las Vegas,” he says. “You have the best service, the best food, the best everything. It is an international headquarters for dance music, and it was built for these crazy weeks.”
As for the current appeal of EDM, R3hab says of that flavor of music what many fans have long said of Cirque du Soleil productions: The absence of any specific language, or lyrics, invites any culture to the swirling tempos of the music.
“Dance music is universal. Everyone can understand it,” he says. “It’s like when you see a traffic sign, the shape and color you understand even without knowing what language it is in. Dance music really is world music. You still feel it, whether you are from India or are from China, Brazil, and that is why it has become so popular.”
From Holland to Las Vegas, Mr. El Ghoul speaks from experience.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.
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