Culture

RedOne: ‘I toured the Dublin bars with Bono’

RedOne – aka Nadir Khayat – the Moroccan-Swedish record producer, singer and , songwriter on his culture highlights

I can’t remember the names of where we went, but I’ve kept pictures from our nights out

Shilpa Ganatra's face
Shilpa Ganatra
Sat Jan 6 2018 - 05:00

Artist

Do you know Mr Brainwash? He's a really cool street artist from France but lives in LA, and he surprises people all the time with his creativity. He's a huge deal, but just happens to be one of my good friends. His work is always a picture of legendary personalities, like Obama or Madonna or James Dean. He mixes them with crazy colours or puts a wig on them, but it's always really cool. He's given me some of his work, but I need to hang it up – I plan to have it in my place in Morocco.

TV

I've been watching The Day I Met El Chapo, a Netflix documentary about a famous actress called Kate del Castillo. With Sean Penn, she got a face-to-face meeting with El Chapo, the biggest drug dealer in history. I haven't finished it, but it's incredibly interesting. She happened to tweet about him and got his interest that way, but it became the biggest scandal in Mexico and created craziness between her and the government and cartels. You see how people can manipulate situations, it's crazy.

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Social media

There are many artists doing great stuff on Instagram, but Daddy Yankee (@daddyyankee) and Ozuna (@ozunapr) stand out because the way the treat their photos is like art. Everytime it's something to do with their photos and them, but in threes: there's a message or colour, or something connecting them. It's something that I'm working to achieve too. It's great when you can see how other people do things and take inspiration from them.

Album

If I listen to an album, it’s from when they used to matter, so something by Foreigner, Europe or Stevie Wonder. Those albums meant something to me. Now I don’t really have the time to listen to a whole album, I’d just listen to two or three songs.

Film

I saw Wonder recently, about a kid with Treacher Collins syndrome. It's very emotional – I was crying all of the whole movie, something constantly happens that makes you cry. I took my son Uri who's nine years old – I wanted him to see how life can be and learn from it.

Gadget

My iPhone X, that’s all that I use. I jumped from the 6 to the X because I was disappointed with the 7 – there was no big difference besides the camera. With this, there’s a much better screen, it’s faster, the battery lasts longer and there’s a better camera. I’m enjoying the quality – even the selfie camera has the quality of the 7’s main camera. I spent a lot of time on Whatsapp with work, friends and family. I’m not big on apps, but I spend time on social media and I watch the soccer results.

City

So many places are amazing and have their own charm, so I have many favourite cities. In Morocco there’s Tétouan, where I was born, and Marrakech. Then of course there’s London, Stockholm and Dubai. I’ve been to Dublin too, I was there with U2 a couple of times. I went out to eat and to bars with Bono and the crew; they’re amazing human beings. I can’t remember the names of where we went, but I’ve kept pictures from our nights out.

Restaurant

I love food so much and there’s so many good places in the world. The obvious one is Nobu. At the same time, there’s a Turkish restaurant in LA called Istanbul. It’s not fancy, it’s a family restaurant, but it’s good.

Find RedOne as @redone on Instagram and @RedOne_Official on Twitter