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| Dj Mustard, producer of My Krazy Life photo courtesy of Roc Nation |
“You gotta get them checks. You have to make sure it’s fun or people aren’t going to buy your music,” DJ Mustard explains. “It’s like with Luke, it was okay to shake your ass to Luke. You didn’t feel a certain type of way; it was only dancing. I am trying to bring back fun and music. That’s ratchet music.”
DJ Mustard whose real name is Dijon McFarlane is focused on playing what people like to hear. On the first day day of the My Krazy Life Tour in Atlanta, he spent almost three hours going to and from the Guitar Center just to get the right equipment for the show. The run made him late for press interviews, but his work ethic puts his performance as a DJ before vanity.
“It’s really important, because I want people to feel like they had a great time. I remember going to shows a long time ago, like Ludacris, and seeing the DJ make the crowd have fun.” DJ Mustard says “I’m really not going to go too far into all my music. I’m trying to have a good time and party.”
While producing his own upcoming work, DJ Mustard who born and rasied in Crenshaw decided to keep it West Coast. He says though he dresses like he’s from the East Coast, staying true to his musical foundation is essential. Instead of featuring big name artists, Mustard kept it homegrown.
“My upcoming album is crazy. I’m working with Ty Dolla$, 2Chainz and YG. I’m not trying to do big names. I’m trying to keep it West Coast. A lot of my homies are on it. It’s a lot of people that nobody has ever heard of. It’s a lot of my friends,” he explains. “My favorite song on the album is “Ghetto Tales” with Jay 305 and TeeCee4800. It’s crazy hard”
The Madness Behind My Krazy Life
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| My Krazy Life Tour YG adnd Dj Mustard Photo courtesy of Roc Nation |
“I was focused on the beats and focused on how I was going to give everybody a full body of work,” DJ Mustard explains. “Cause everybody only knows me from singles. They don’t know I can do a full body or album so when I was doing this album it was my time.”
The album My Krazy Life came out of a long relationship with YG that began with his second mixtape The Real 4Fingaz. From there DJ Mustard exploited the synergy between the two and became YG’s official DJ. The relationship has proved beneficial for both men, and DJ Mustard says any good DJ knows what works for his artists and what doesn’t.
“We’ve been homies for so long where if he is doing something whack or I’m doing something whack - I can tell him and he can tell me. We are really homies at the end of the day. Any disputes we have and/or arguments, we sit down and talk about it. We don’t let petty arguments fuck up our music,” DJ Mustard says. “Everybody has a duo, Mike Will and Future, Dre and Snoop and YG and Mustard. It’s a lot of people that are like that.”
The team created the album in Atlanta where YG studied with Sycamore, and DJ Mustard did what he does best…. make beats. Mustard says the reason the album flows so well is because he kept it authentic to YG. He admits he didn’t try anything different, but what he did do was work with a group of legendary producers to make an album with a sound that is relatively new to listeners of the latest hip-hop genre.
“It was everybody putting in a helping hand. Jeezy executive produced and Sycamore executive produced. We were all focused on putting it together and making a classic album. Everybody was putting their chime in. We also got together with a couple of other producers. Terrace Martin did his thing, Metro has his own beat, B-Wheezy has his own beat and my producer Mike Lee has his own beat,” DJ Mustard recalls. “We all came together and the story of the album made it the best. The music and the beats helped YG paint a picture of My Krazy Life. It was like art.”