Meet the Manager Prioritizing ‘Investing In People’ — Like Star Client Kehlani
Categoria: Musica
The Above Ground Entertainment CEO is Billboard's 2026 R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players executive of the year.
Por Billboard | 20/08/2026
By the time David Ali finally met Kehlani, at her Receda, Calif., home in the San Fernando Valley in 2013, they’d been trying to link up for months. He’d first become aware of the fledgling 18-year-old singer-songwriter after hearing one of her early SoundCloud uploads, “Antisummerluv,” earlier that year. After he tweeted his praise at her, the two agreed they should meet. “But she was busy, I was busy and it just never happened,” the soft-spoken Ali recalls over brunch on a hot July morning in Los Angeles. When the San Francisco-based music business entrepreneur and the Oakland, Calif., native finally crossed paths, though, they had immediate chemistry. “We talked for four, five hours, while she played me a bunch of songs,” Ali says. “I felt then like her story was my story: I understood where she was coming from. I just wanted her to win.” Related R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players: Billboard’s 2026 List Revealed Kehlani Gets Candid With Longtime Pal Leon Thomas About R&B, ‘Changing the World’ & Her ‘Sinus Surgery From Hell’ HYBE Pledges Over $300k for Colombia Earthquake Recovery Today, Kehlani is Billboard ’s 2026 R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players R&B Artist of the Year and Ali is her manager. But that moment 13 years ago is still at the heart of his operating philosophy as CEO of the full-service management and entertainment company Above Ground Entertainment: building careers and business partnerships by fostering artistic freedom, trust and loyalty. “It’s about investing in people,” says Billboard ’s R&B/Hip-Hop Executive of the Year, who also manages R&B singer Destin Conrad and rapper Larry June. “If they don’t make money, I don’t make money. That’s been my thing from the beginning of this [journey]. With this job, you’re signing up to be the person who’s got to be there for your artist through thick and thin. And I love it.” Since Kehlani signed with Ali in 2014, that approach has supported her steady rise over the course of four studio albums to becoming both a commercial and critical force in contemporary R&B. But the June 2025 release of her single “Folded” unlocked her biggest career wins to date — including her first-ever Billboard Hot 100 top 10, her first No. 1 debut on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums , a No. 4 bow on the Billboard 200 for the self-titled album that followed and two Grammy Awards. “When we dropped ‘Folded,’ the response just kept getting bigger every week,” Ali says. “Even now, it’s still going. That song really changed Kehlani’s life and mine. The best part is that I always knew she was going to have that moment; to see it happening is cool.” Growing up in North Plainfield, N.J., Ali always loved music, counting Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G. and DMX among his childhood heroes. “I fell in love with hip-hop early,” says Ali, 37, “and ever since the Myspace days, I’d been trying to find my way into music.” At 15 he began learning the music business when his father’s best friend started a sma