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The 2019 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards are live tonight, honoring the younger generation’s favorites in pop culture. Every year, the show is hosted by a celebrity who is beloved by and relatable to the audience. The host is responsible not only for keeping the show moving through each award and acceptance speech, but for also orchestrating (and falling victim to) the pranks and games for which the show is famous.
This year’s host is DJ Khaled, who is famous as a DJ, television and social media personality, songwriter, and producer. Khaled has been promoting his upcoming album “FATHER of ASAHD,” which will be released on May 17, and he has an active social media presence especially on Snapchat and Instagram (on which he has 14.4 million followers to-date). When the news was announced in February, Khaled said “Father of Asahd is here to let you know the biggest party of the year is about to go up! That’s right, March 23rd I’m your host, DJ Khaled for the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. I’ll see you soon!”
In addition to being this year’s host of the Kids’ Choice Awards, he is also nominated in three different categories: Favorite Male Singer, Favorite Collaboration (for “No Brainer”), and Favorite TV Judges (for The Four: Battle for Stardom). Online fan voting will determine who wins in each category.
To build hype ahead of the award show, Nickelodeon has included DJ Khaled trivia on their website for fans to participate in when voting for their favorites in each category. Some of the multiple choice questions are “What is DJ Khaled’s son’s name,” “What’s the name of DJ Khaled’s book,” and “In which movie did DJ Khaled play himself (but didn’t actually ‘play himself’ because ‘don’t ever play yourself?'” Nickelodeon has been heavily promoting DJ Khaled as their host this year, both on social and with video content on their channel.
In an interview, Khaled revealed that his hosting gig for the Kids’ Choice Awards has taken on extra meaning as he’s getting to share in the excitement of the experience with his son Asahd: “When the commercials come on, my son is like ‘Daddy, daddy, daddy!’ Because, you know, he watches Nickelodeon. So do I. It’s like, the commercial comes on every second. And I’m like, man, they’ve got me looking good out here. My son, to see him smile and say ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ — it really touched me.”
Last year, John Cena hosted the show and was slimed on-stage. Getting “slimed” during the awards show is practically a right of passage for its hosts, so expect that DJ Khaled will end up covered in Nickelodeon’s signature lime green slime by the end of the night.
The awards include a broad range of fun, kid-friendly categories, including “Favorite Video Game,” “Favorite Cartoon,” “Favorite Superhero,” and “Favorite Male Voice From an Animated Movie.” Some of the celebrity nominees are James Corden, Chris Pratt, Joey King, and Chadwick Boseman. Avengers: Infinity War has the most nominations this year with 10 total.
Tune in to the 2019 Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon, hosted by DJ Khaled, on Saturday March 23 at 8/7c.