Last weekend the new Brisk Half & Half beverages invaded Chicago and set up a dope Brisk Bodega at Double Door.
I was on hand for the entire Brisk weekend and got to chop it up with the hottest producer in the game, DJ Mustard. Before the Cali DJ turned producer hit the stage to rock a jam-packed crowd at the Brisk Bodega, we sat down for dinner at the scrumptious Girl And Goat, an amazing Chi-Town eatery.
Over dinner, Mustard chatted and conversed with guests as he was still on his diet. He was open to all advice and even stayed away from the alcohol and settled on a Shirley Temple to go with vegetable heavy meal.
During dinner I realized that the Brisk team were really in tuned with the culture, as we sipped Turnt Up Tea, exchanged funny vines and actually had to talk a few people out of dancing on a table, but you didn’t hear that from me! Turn Up!!!
After dinner we headed over to the Brisk Bodega where DJ Mustard broke it all down for me in a very candid interview. We talked about his upcoming album 10 Summers, why some of his beats sound similar, his future plans and the most important thing to him, his family. Check it out below.
GlobalGrind: 10 Summers. Tell me who are the people that you have on your album.
DJ Mustard: Jeezy. Ross. YG. Nipsy. Ty. I got a couple of surprises. Not Jay Z. everybody is always thinking Jay Z, Rhianna or something. I didn’t really go to my Roc Nation fam for this album because I wanted to kind of show that I could do it on my own. So I got a lot of up and coming people that’s from LA that I’m working with. But I think it’s more opportunities for them to build a plat form off my album so I’m kinda tryna put the homies on.
You mention Meek as one of your favorite emcees and a couple of days ago when Meek was going at Wale, you put out a tweet “ Like fuck niggas doing other stuff”. How do you feel about the whole Wale and Meek exchange?
I mean I know Meek you know what I’m saying. That’s my homie and I can’t get in the middle of their beef. That’s their own issue but I understand where he’s coming from. If I’m a part of a team, everybody on my team better support me. So I guess Meek was just felling at the moment like he wasn’t getting supported by one of his own team members so he spoke his mind to it.
Do you feel like you’re on of the new hot producers or do you just feel like a hot producer?
I feel like I’m gonna be one the next hot producers over the Next 10 summers. That’s my goal. I don’t try to get caught up in the “you’re the hottest producer right now”. I don’t like when people put the right now on it. It’s kind of like saying “you’re only here for right now”. I’m trying to do 10 big numbers. I’m trying to do Timberland numbers. I’m trying to do Pharell numbers. Lil John numbers. Kanye numbers. So I kinda just feel like I’m bound to be great you know what I’m saying?
What do you say to people who say a lot of your stuff sounds very similar?
I mean half of the time it ain’t my fault because when you hear a hit record, the labels come after you for those same hit records all over again. But nobody has their own identity any more. Everybody wants to be like ‘this’ person. If I was to give you a song and it works for you somebody else will come and be like “oh I want a song like his song” or “I want you to make me that” so that’s why a lot of the songs sound like that. It’s because that’s what they’re asking for. I have no problem doing it, it’s all cool but at the end of the day I get the back lash from it because people feel like I’m just doing the same thing but that’s obviously what they want and obviously what the people want because it’s so many that complain, but it’s so many that just like the music. So I take it as good and as bad at the same time.
Did you bring back the West coast back?
I wouldn’t say single handidly, but I would say I had a lot to do with it. It’s a lot of people out there that’s been working for a long time. Nipsy Hussle. YG. Ty Dolla Sign. Don Kennedy. Casey Veggies. Tyler the Creator. Frank Ocean. It definitely wasn’t me by myself. Kendrick Lamar. School Boy Q. Absole. J-rock. We all from the West. So it’s a good thing to just have the west be one. The Game. Everybody
Before the resurgence of the West came back, how did that make you feel when the west fell off? How did it make you feel when you got in the game and started doing what you were doing?
I always had the intentions of being a DJ. I just wanted to be like Drama. That was my intentions. I never wanted to be a producer. Once I went to try to be a producer, I kind of liked it and I feel like this is something I want to do for the rest of my life. When I got my foot in the door I was just like I’m not going to slow down now. And that’s what a lot of these producers do. They get one record and get this money and they think that money last forever. I’m aware that money don’t last forever and I’m aware that I got a son and I want my son to live the same life that I live, and my girl as well. So you have so many people depending on you, you gotta do what you gotta do. And YG has a charity right now. I just gave a couple grand to his charity just for the kids. It’s about more that just the music sometimes.
Why is being a father and a provider important to you?
Being a father is important to me because my father got deported when I was younger. My father is Jamaican and he got deported when I was way younger because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong things. I didn’t have a father figure until my uncle stepped in, and he’s the reason why I am how I am today because he stepped in and actually left me at a party and I DJ’d the party, and once he figured that I could hole it on my own he started booking me with party after party after party. And he showed me how to be a man and until this day I would call him my father. I got his name tatted down my whole forearm. He stepped up and was just the father figure that I never had so I give it to him.
With all these songs on the radio, is it your son that you do it for?
Yeah. I was doing it before I had a kid. When you have a kid it makes you think a little bit. I’ve always had somebody depend on me which is my moms and my family but when you really have someone depending on you, it’s a different story. A lot of the bullshit you don’t really want to be involved in because you have to run home to your son. And God forbid if anything were to happen, like if I was to kill somebody or somebody was to try to kill me, I wouldn’t be able to go home to my son. I try to stay away from that shit. It just makes you think different. I’m not as wild as I was back then. We might catch a little scuffle and shit but that’s not me. It’s like, I just want to be around my son. I don’t really give a fuck about nothing else.
Now when you work with Rihanna, Kanye and all those other people, are you going in those sessions like ‘Yo I’m doing your single?”
Naw. Hell naw. I’m just enjoying the blessing of being in the same room as these people. I always remember Big Sean saying “standing next to over a million dollars never seemed so broke”. Being around these people that has all of this money it’s like you’re naked. You’re new. You have a lot of work to do and I think that’s what keeps me going a lot too because I’m far from where I want to be and I think that I will always be far from where I want to be because it’s never enough. So if I’m in the studio shit I’m learning!
What are you going to do in your 11th summer?
I’m gonna go for the next 10 summers after that. The reason I call it 10 summers is because it’s 10 summers at the least. And I speak for the West coast in general. I don’t mean just me. I mean YG. I mean Nipsy. I mean Ty Dolla Sign. I mean I’m gonna do whatever I gotta do to make sure that the west stays on for the next 10 summers. It’s really just a promise to the street. It’s not really all about me.
Is there a beat that we haven’t heard that you absolutely love and you really want someone to use? And what’s the name of that beat?
I had shut down and stopped doing beats for a couple of months because I was working on my album. I just recently started back doing beats and the new stuff I’m coming up with, I can’t wait to hear what people are gonna come with. And I only sent them to Jeezy just now because that’s my dog and he’s working on his album, and he’s been waiting on me. He did everything I needed him to do for my album and I had to just give him first rights on the new stuff I did. The new stuff is different.
What was it like when Jeezy took YG under his wing?
Me and YG kind of had a argument. A lot of people don’t know about that. I told YG don’t do it and I’m not afraid of saying that. I didn’t even know Jeezy. I was just like naw man let’s just do our own thing. We don’t need to do that. But when I was in the studio and I kind of got a vibe from Jeezy, and I seen how passionate Jeezy was about YG, I kind of felt bad and was thinking maybe I was wrong. Jeezy helped me and YG out. I feel like that was the best thing YG could have done for me and YG as a whole and even though I said no, I’m glad that he didn’t listen. As homies you not going to always agree but one homie is going to be right and it’s going to take a real homie and a real man to admit “I was wrong and I feel like that was the best thing you could have possibly did.”
