The video for Location included a guide to how to pronounce the noob’s name: Kuh-leed. By the time Khalid graduated from high school a couple of months later, Kylie Jenner had tweeted the track. “Send me your location,” it went, Khalid’s caramelised ache cracking in just the right places. Only now, it was about dropping a pin on to a virtual map. It was an instant classic of telecommunications-themed romance, in the vein of every love song previously featuring a telephone. In the spring of 2016, Khalid uploaded a yearning love song, Location, on to Soundcloud – partly in an attempt to shore up his social status before his prom.
Even in an era increasingly given to out-of-nowhere successes, Khalid Donnel Robinson’s rise from El Paso teenager to international stadium-filler has been like greased lightning – to borrow a phrase from a distant teenaged past.
