Who is Dijon McFarlane?
Half Music Producer, Half Sandwich Condiment
We are living in a golden age of music streaming platforms. Spotify, Apple Music or Tidal (does anyone other than Jay Z actually use this?) whatever your poison may be it is unlikely that you are more than one click or tap away from a wealth of music.
When I say wealth, I mean huge/bloody massive/f’ing enormous/Bill Gates-level wealth of music. It’s really quite startling if you take a minute to consider the abundance. So how does one make a name for themselves and carve a path in this so-saturated-it-is-dripping industry?
A few possible options:
A) you have natural musical ability — (Drake)
B) your family name and credibility give you a huge advantage — (hmmmm Jaden Smith)
C) you create your own genre of music — (Hendrix)
D) you do a T-Pain and autotune everything (for some reason people seem to love autotune..) — (Stop T-Pain, just stop!)
Artists will typically use one of the above to emerge into the mainstream having surfed the cyclical wave of underground enthusiasm.
How many times have you felt like you have only just discovered someone on Spotify and the next thing you know they are rocketing up the charts, before you have had a chance to tell anyone to check out this hot new artist? To say musical trends move quickly these days is an understatement.
Sooner or later the music industry’s leading corporates will swoop in and fling lucrative contracts at these fresh faced which can be career launching, shaping or destroying.
The insatiable appetite for streamable music has knock on effects on artists abilities’ to stay relevant. Flavour of the week has become flavour of the day and will soon probably become flavour of the morning as musicians battle to capture attention, airtime and cyber space. Artists can disappear as quickly as they were catapulted onto the scene (Anyone seen Iggy Azalea recently? Anyone?!)
However, some artists are clever enough to avoid this short tem peak and plummet and grind hard to steadily produce consistently appealing music without falling into the trap of the all too easy ‘one hit wonder’.
Dijon McFarlane seems to have found a way to cheat the system having been an established name on the hip hop/rap/R&B (take your pick) scene for the last 6 years. What a fantastic name I hear you say, but who on earth is Dijon McFarlane, well you may know him better as DJ Mustard, a.k.a “Mustard on the beat”.
McFarlane’s real break into the public conscious came when he and Tyga released the infamous ‘Rack City’ which gave the LA native his first taste of the Billboard Hot 100. A distinguishable sound prompted a response from some of the industry’s biggest names , “Rack City” paved the way for a series of hits — his hook up with Ty Dolla $ign in 2014 led to the creation of “Paranoid”, my favourite mustard-scented song.
Since then McFarlane has teamed up with the likes of Tinashe (2 On), Big Sean (IDFWU) and Rick Ross (Sanctified) to name but a few. But what is it that drives the sound of DJ Mustard? — Fun, pure and simple, in his own words he creates his music so people “can go to the club and have some fun”.
However, critics may argue that McFarlane’s music, the distinct sound to which I earlier referred always follows a predictable pattern. A lack of variation and a reliance on the foundations upon which he built “Rack City” are cited as the 26 year old’s shortcomings.
I feel to cite those shortcomings are to ignore his evolution as a producer. Some of his more recent work (Set the Roof — Rae Sremmurd, Don’t Hurt Me — Nicki Minaj and Jeremiah and Whole Lotta Lovin — Travis Scott) represent an ability to stay relevant in a constantly evolving landscape.
OT
