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Fadil Al Ghoul also known as R3hab is China’s latest phenomena these days. The Dutch star of Moroccan descents has gained so much popularity in the Asian country.
Son of two Moroccan parents, the 31-year-old DJ grew up in Den Bosch, is a city and municipality in the southern Netherlands. Passionate about music since his teenage years, Fadil chose R3hab as an on scene name for him in order to be easily found on the internet. However picking this name was not a hit or miss for the young DJ because «when you need something, you need rehab», says Fadil Al Ghoul to the American Magazine Forbes.
His first breakthrough occurred in the late 2000s when a song he composed with Hardwell made his debut in the top 40 in the Netherlands. In the early years of 2010, he attracted the attention of Calvin Harris, one of the highest-paid international DJs in the world. The two artists collaborated making a song entitled «Burning» which appears in the album of Calvin Harris «Motion». In 2013, the 31-year-old was looking for a manager and he met Derek Dolin. «The pair clicked quickly, and R3hab asked him to look into China, which was something of an unknown territory for dance music at the time», writes Forbes.
Five million dollars in 2016
Dolin was of great help to Fadil, as he helped him organize trips to play in clubs in all over China. To promote their events, they used social media, and most precisely Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. The DJ became famous in China to the point that his fans waited for him in the airport whenever he arrives to their city. On his last trip, he was supposed to play from midnight to 2am in a nightclub, then from 3 to 5 am in another one.
A fast paced life for one of the most international DJ's in China. Earlier this year, R3hab hosted a show where he chose to stop in Chinese «small towns» such as Xian and Chengdu, where several million people live.
The Moroccan-Dutch DJ is becoming one of the most important electronic phenomena on the Chinese scene, while its peers focus on the United States and Europe, comments Forbes. And today, he has Chinese fans in the United States who remained loyal even after their expatriation. The latter continue to send him messages via Weibo.
Fadil Al Ghoul played in over 130 shows, where he could earn $ 40,000 per performance in Europe and more than double in China. Moreover, Forbes magazine estimates that the DJ won nearly five million dollars in 2016.
