LA Super-Producer Mustard Sets the New Standard for Collaborative Albums with "Perfect Ten"

By Spencer Lobdell

Los Angeles super-producer DJ Mustard is back with a tracklist full of high-level features, club bangers, and an unmistakable west coast sound that he helped pioneer.

Dijon McFarlane (Mustard) has been riding the streets of LA since he was born in 1990 and his hometown pride shines brightly in all his music dating back to 2011 when he co-produced YG’s classic mixtape Just Re’d Up. The decorated DJ has worked with nearly every modern Los Angeles rapper from Dom Kennedy to Nipsey Hussle. Mustard commonly refers to his sound as “ratchet music” that is inescapable at clubs and parties leading us to wonder if he would ever abandon this pop-driven style for something with more substance.

DJ Mustard began Perfect Ten’s rollout at the beginning of the new year when he dropped “Pure Water” on January 16th. The track features the Migos with Mustard cooking up the perfect high energy instrumental allowing the three Atlanta rappers to have an instant hit. Following in-stride with the producer’s earlier work, this song was constantly in rotation on the radio and in the club for months.

Five months later Mustard followed up his smash with another star-studded track “100 Bands” which features Quavo, 21 Savage, YG, and Meek Mill and while I love all these artists individually the track came out as overly generic. Although the single sold well it was easily the most disappointing out of his three pre-releases. 

Exactly one week prior to the album's release, Mustard dropped “On God” aided by A$AP Ferg, A$AP Rocky, YG, & Tyga. While this song was unimpressive to me upon release, over the past two weeks it has grown on me every time I hit play. Now I believe “On God” is one of the hardest hitting tracks on the album and home to Tyga’s best verse of the year.

On June 28th Mustard released Perfect Ten on his new sub-Interscope label, 10 Summers Records. The album is ten songs long and runs for just over thirty minutes. Upon release, Mustard took to Twitter to say that he didn’t care about sales but rather just creating timeless music.

The album gets right into things with the first track “Intro” being potentially my favorite joint on the album. The track showcases a classic Mustard beat that uses a pitched vocal sample making the human voice sound like a trap whistle. Rising LA rapper 1takejay is featured on the track and is tasked with being Perfect Ten’s attention getter, something he is very good at. Jay’s nasally LA drawl slices through the instrumental with a certain cockiness and swagger that is near impossible to match. The hook is catchy and Jay keeps us coming back for more with his unique flow that is sure to gift him many hits in the near future.

After two of the three pre-releases, we are graced with the sure-to-be fan favorite “Baguettes in the Face” which features Playboi Carti, NAV, and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. NAV takes the hook with Carti and Boogie each getting a verse to themselves. Each artist stays very much in their specific lane making this song familiar yet fresh and pleasing all three artists' somewhat culty fan bases.

Mustard experiments with a very Latino-inspired instrumental on “Interstate 10” with Future but really the track sounds more like filler than any sort of creative deviation.

This album peaks at the end with the last two tracks being emotional, exceptional, and as West Coast as it gets. The first of the two, “Ballin’” features the young LA legend Roddy Ricch. Mustard’s relaxed instrumental is the perfect home for Roddy’s street bars allowing him enough room per line to continue to switch his flow and pack rhyme after rhyme into each stanza. Roddy’s melodies are addicting and “Ballin’” is a song that can be played anywhere anytime.

The album concludes with the somber “Perfect Ten” which shines the spotlight on Mustards frequent collaborator and friend, the late Nipsey Hussle. The instrumental is anchored by beautiful guitars and allows plenty of open space for Nipsey to inspire listeners with his laid back flow and speaking interludes where he drops knowledge about LA, hip-hop, and life in general. The marathon continues.

Perfect Ten is the new standard for how entertaining a collaborative album headlined by a producer can, and should, be. Mustard seamlessly recruited high-level features for every track without allowing the project to sound like a shallow dinner party for the famous, like his peer DJ Khaled frequently does. He maintains some level of cohesion throughout the entire project which is a near-miracle since his voice/writing is not featured on the project. On Perfect Ten Mustard achieved exactly what he set out to accomplish, the creation of a fun album with no skips, proving that less truly is more.

Favorite Tracks:

Intro (Feat. 1takejay)

Baguettes in the Face (Feat. NAV, Playboi Carti, & A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie)

Ballin’ (Feat. Roddy Ricch)

Rating: 7.5

Listen to Perfect Ten here:

Perfect Ten, an album by Mustard on Spotify

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NAV Bores With His New Project, "Bad Habits"

By Kaila Cherry

NAV has slowly been integrating himself into rap/R&B scene for the past few years. He has collaborated with some of the hottest names in contemporary hip hop today, like Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, The Weeknd, Metro Boomin, and Quavo. NAV has his hand in several facets of the music making process. The range of his skills has led him to have rapping, producing, and songwriting all under his belt. After recently coming out of his two month retirement from music prompted by Lil Uzi Vert’s own step back from the industry, NAV dropped his second studio album entitled Bad Habits.

NAV’s foray back into music (although he barely left) is just as impressive as his previous project and features. Bad Habits encapsulates NAV’s strict adherence to the OVO type cloth he has been cut from. Because of his resistance to diverge from the sleepy and emotionally driven (in NAV’s case, devoid) sing-rap archetype popularized by the likes of Drake and The Weeknd, NAV delivers a project we have all undoubtedly heard before.  

Bad Habits gets pretty boring pretty quickly. Nav’s voice follows very simple melodies over slow trap beats. The sound of this album is fairly predictable. Once you’ve heard the style of the first two or three tracks, you have a good sense on what the the entire 50 minutes sounds like. Despite the lack of ambition NAV demonstrates on the project, the tracks do follow a formula that works. Even though they are extremely basic both musically and lyrically, NAV has a voice that is easy to sing along with. The beats are catchy and effortlessly danceable. Bad Habits is undeniably a product of its time. Very little within the project on its own holds any longevity or stand-alone merit. However, if I were to hear songs like “To My Grave” or “Taking Chances” at a party, I wouldn’t be opposed to having it play. However, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish these songs from artists like Raury or Majid Jordan, either.

The strongest track on Bad Habits is “Price on My Head” featuring The Weeknd. I believe this is largely due to the fact that the first two verses of the song are carried by The Weeknd himself, with NAV not coming in with his rap until the last third of the song. Even so, I thought the production on “Price on My Head” was refreshing in comparison to the rest of the album.  The synth piano progression gives the ear an interesting sound to latch onto throughout the track. The Weeknd’s voice is smooth and cool as he sings about the recklessness of his party lifestyle and how he attracts jealousy from those who wish they could live like him. NAV’s verse uses a healthy amount of autotune both to add to the sort of frantic nature of the song as well as to compensate for any vocal disparities between him and The Weeknd. The Weeknd’s feature is also the best feature on the album by far, with big names such as Young Thug, Meek Mill, and Gunna falling short.

On the whole, NAV’s Bad Habits is less of a complete flop and more of an underwhelming release. None of the songs are awful. In fact, they each sound nice on their own and would fit seamlessly into a night out playlist. The tracks are catchy enough to stick to the ear for the duration of the songs. But that is about it. NAV fails to bring anything new to the subsection of rap in which he operates in. And because of that, Bad Habits is nothing special as an album or as a reflection of NAV’s artistry. This album will come and go, and is utterly forgettable.

Favorite Tracks

To My Grave

Price on My Head (Feat. The Weeknd)

Vicodin

Rating: 5

Stream Bad Habits here:

Bad Habits, an album by NAV on Spotify

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