Critics of de-facto ratchet-music producer DJ Mustard I'm no longer talking to you. Since Mustard first knocked rap upside the head with the stark, mechanical beat for "Rack City" all he’s done is creep into every corner of the rap landscape. 2013 saw him drop one of the year's best albums with the Ketchup mixtape and team up with gangster-crooner Teeflii for the endlessly replayable Fireworks. Not even halfway into 2014, he and frequent collaborator YG leveled West Coast competitors with My Krazy Life. To say he's winning is a vast understatement, he's already won and it’s a landslide victory.
Despite the success, Mustard has yet to have an official studio release which will change when 10 Summers debuts later this year. If first single "Down On Me" is any indicator of the record's caliber, 10 Summers will be polished chrome. Though the producer doesn't rap himself, the track has every idiosyncrasy of a primo Mustard song. An eerie hum floats above the beat like the "lights over the Night Vale Arby's." Bass clonks rise up from the house party downstairs. Handclaps ring out with cultish fervor. Somewhere in the
maelstrom a keyboard can be heard twinkling. "Weird" doesn’t begin to describe the effort.
Fortunately, Mustard was able to recruit two of rap's burgeoning weirdoes for "Down On Me". Oversexed freakzoid Ty Dolla $ign mumble croons about having girls "walking funny" and doing the deed sans protection. It's all fairly deplorable behavior, but Dolla $ign so effortlessly catalogs it you end up leaning in to listen closely.
However, no amount of attentive listening will be able to help with 2 Chainz. Though Chainz and DJ Mustard have only worked together once before, on the impeccable "I'm Different", "Down On Me" suggests they're attached at the hip. For everything Mustard beats are filled with they're rarely overstuffed, leaving rappers ample room to s***-talk to their heart's content. And no one in hip-hop right now does s***-talking quite like the man born Tauheed Epps. You need your own dictionary and a finger ready to hit rewind when Chainz comes on. If the Atlanta-drawl doesn't do you in, the ad-libs will. According to "Down On Me" he's paying car notes after copulating and goes "turtleneck in the summer." 10-plus listens and I'm still not sure what his sweater has to do with anything. But like a Mustard beat at large, his eccentricity should be enjoyed on its own accord.
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