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Up Next is DJ Mustard

The big rap song of 2012 is “Rack City”. Tyga’s chant of “Rack city bitch” and the ridiculous low-high budget action music video might have been what broader pop culture picked up from the song, but the song’s producer, DJ Mustard, is who the focus should have been put on. The minimalism of “Rack City” flies in the face of radio stations still controlled by Lex Luger and his offspring’s plodding dark plodding beats; but “Up!”, “The Motto”, “Slight Work”, “Beez in the Trap”, and even “Climax” show restraint and not maximalism to be the new trend in rap music. Yet, DJ Mustard works with more than dry minimalism and across multiple singles and a couple mixtapes; he has shown himself ready to be the new hot producer in rap.

Before delving into those other styles, lets travel back to “Rack City”. DJ Mustard doesn’t repeat using the thin wiry synth that is the main drive of the song; instead Mustard takes inspiration from the track’s sparseness. In March, YG released his mixtape 4 Hunnid Degreez that was entirely produced by DJ Mustard. And, the production on “Keenon Jackson” and “Do It With My Tongue” could easily have been “Track 03” and “Track 05” sandwiching “Rack City” on a beat CD sent to Tyga, because those song barely deviate from Tyga’s hit. But, Mustard’s the best take on the “Rack City” formula is “I’m Rollin”, a track originally for Meek Mill’s Dreamchasers 2, but didn’t quite make the final cut. It strips “Rack City” down even further, to only the drums—and there are mostly just high-hat crashes, some punchy bass, and Mustard’s signature “ha” yells. This allows Meek Mill to rap with no restraint from the production, and while it wouldn’t be the catchiest of singles, it’s a great contrast of styles, as Meek sticks with the Luger indebted MMG sound. Mustard has other songs in this vein (see: “I’ma Thug”, which just adds a siren synth to “I’m Rollin” and not much else), but Mustard’s minimalism take cues beyond just “Rack City”.

The Virginian duo, The Neptunes, influence on pop and rap music has dwindled since their early 2000s peak; but, young artists like Tyler the Creator citing them as primary influences shows a new generation of producers aren’t going to let their sound be lost. Mustard, who just turned 21, would have been in middle school, when the Neptunes were ruling the pop charts with stripped down minimalism (“Grindin”) and out there maximalism (“Slave 4 U”), and doing what now seems impossible in getting multiple hits out of the Clipse. With “How To Make It In America” Mustard remakes a lesser Clipse hits “When the Last Time” with a familiar airy stomp that knocks harder when the rest of the track is so empty. Biting the Neptunes isn’t Mustard at his most original, but sounding a decade out of date isn’t a bad way to find a unique sound.

And, yet this minimalist angle is just one side of DJ Mustard, because he really separates himself from other producers with his R&B tinged tracks. The other mixtape that Mustard entirely produced this year was Joe Moses and Ty$’s Whoop!. The highlight of the tape is “The Man”, where the two rapped verses take a backseat to Ty$ chorus (“Imma be the man for a minute”) and Mustard’s beat that re-imagines Snap music for the bedroom instead of a middle school playground. “Don’t Stop” also manages to include vodocer in the chorus, which along with the auto-tuned first verse sounds like they were inspired to create some multiple generational voice modulated R&B (or maybe that one of these guys read Dave Tompkins, vodocer history book, How to Wreck a Nice Beach, and was striving to be included in a revised edition). Yet, in these R&B inspired songs, Mustard’s handclaps and “ha” remained, acting as his own calling card, no matter how out there his production gets.

With all of these different styles, I’d wager Mustard has listened to more than The Neptunes and some Dr. Dre records at some point in his life. But, I’m not sure if he was listening to Chillwave in 2009, so I doubt he was thinking of the much-maligned genre when he produced “Go So Deep”. The song is a bit more PRB&B than Chillwave, to continue with the questionable critic genre names, but the bedroom-recorded sounding sample of “we go so deep” that floats in the background brings to mind early Washed Out or ephemeral tracks from Tri Angle Records. Yet, there are more Top 40 sounds with “Boothang” by Bobby Bracken, Joe Moses, and Ty$, which sounds like the rave synths of Red One or David Guetta set on top of “Rack City”. It might not be the best track Mustard produced, but it is an interesting take on 2012 radio music, where “Rack City” and “Starships” are the biggest rap songs of the year.  And, that probably what’s so great about Mustard’s recent work is how his production easily switches between various these genres without calling attention to itself, while emulating these other styles pretty damn well. 

It's Alive: Did Nicki fail pop, or did pop fail Nicki?

jordansargent:

This isn’t a rhetorical question; I’ve been thinking about it for a bit and still am not sure of the answer, if there even is one. But, now that the fervor over Roman Reloadedhas died down, I think it’s interesting to think about what the album means to pop. Is Nicki currently unable, or maybe unwilling, to navigate the waters of pop without resorting to the lowest common denominator, or is she a woman out of time?

My lasting thought reRoman Reloaded has switched from, “Wouldn’t it be great if she made a whole rap album?” to, “How would this album have turned out if Nicki had people like Timbaland and the Neptunes at her disposal?” My hope would be that if Nicki could work with peak-era Tim or the Neptunes, that the pop that she would create would be much more adventurous, something that bridged the gap between “Beez in the Trap” and the Billboard Top 10. (Or maybe “Beez in the Trap”will do that.) But maybe that wouldn’t happen, or wouldn’t even be possible considering the market.

Nicki is a singular voice in pop, but she’s come up in a time where basically no producers and/or writers are consistently bridging the gap between rap/r&b and pop in a way that doesn’t seemingly make massive concessions. Forget Tim and Neptunes, there isn’t really anyone out there right now that could even hit Nicki with a “London Bridge.” Wouldn’t it be great to hear what Nicki and Pharrell and Chad would’ve done with the “I’m a Slave 4 U” beat?

Whether listeners have pushed what would be (or could be) the next Pharrell out of pop or whether a lack of Pharrells has allowed pop to submit itself to Europe is something I also don’t really know the answer to. Would Nicki over the “Southern Hospitality” or “Gossip Folks” beats be top 20 hits right now? If not, would that be Nicki’s fault? Or would it be the marketplace’s fault? 

I realize I’m sort of creating an alternate universe here that contains an irreconcilable number of variables, but Roman Reloaded leaves me with a lot of questions about pop music in 2012, and a much smaller number that I can answer. At some point, I think the back-and-forth contrarian arguing over whether the pop parts ofRoman Reloaded are “right” or “good” will look silly to us in retrospect, as the next few years of Nicki’s career should help us answer a lot of the questions that we — or at least I — have right now.

Maybe here’s a better way of putting it (or maybe not): despite what you heard on Watch the Throne, it’s really Nicki that’s the LeBron James of pop.

I don’t think there’s anyone at fault with how this album ended up turning out and certainly no pointed blame could be made of the marketplace it was released into. While, it would be great to hear Nicki work with early 2000 Timbaland or Neptunes, I would also love to hear another Outkast album and well we know how likely that is to happen. The music climate is constantly changing, and maybe “Beez in the Trap” could become a Top 10 hit—I certain didn’t hear a Top 10 single the first time I heard “Niggas in Paris” or “Rack City”—but if it doesn’t no one would be surprised. 

The separation of Pop and Rap in 2012 is kind of interesting. A hit Pop song in 2012 is so by the numbers at this point that if Guetta, Dr. Luke, or RedOne on a track one can assume that it is already a Top 40 hit, but who are those producers in the rap world? At least in terms of Top 40 hits, the era of the rap producer reigning supreme has been over for a few years now, and while there are those occational hit cross-over songs, no one producer dominates the rap and pop charts the way someone like Lil Jon was doing nearly a decade ago. Yet, if one did, who knows if they would have produced more than a song or two for this album, because while “I’m a Slave 4 U” is a classic single, it was Clipse and Kelis were getting fully produced Neptunes albums not Britney. 

And to question of whether those previous Neptunes produced single would be hits today: No, they wouldn’t be. Most songs don’t get second lives for a reason, because at least for the general public songs exist in certain period and are popular for a specific circumstance that just cannot be replicated no matter how great or timeless a song might seem. Would “Yeah” by a #1 hit again in 2012, probably not, and I doubt it would even crack the Top 20. 

Amazing - T.I. (feat. Pharrell)

I do not really care for T.I. at all, and over his last three albums my interest T.I.’s music has only decreased further. So, the only reason I bothered listening to a song off of No Mercy was because of Tom Breihan’s review, which described this song as ”(Amazing) finds the Neptunes taking it back to 2002, delivering the sort of chilly minimalist computer-funk that they never make anymore, and Tip just dives into those chasms of empty space with the assurance of an old pro (Pharrell gets the best punchline”, while I strongly disagree with the latter in that quote as I wish I could have never heard either of their verses, the former is very much right in this sounds like something that could have been a lost track from Lord Willin’.

“Haterade” by Gucci Mane is not a great song, but the production from the Neptunes with this specific song sounds like a distant brother of “Amazing” with the drums hitting no where near as hard, and having the keys that sound like they are sound tracking the pouring of wine. ”Amazing” is a lot less cluttered with sounds, letting each one sound more distinct, which is the opposite of “Haterade”, where the keys are the are featured so prominently in the song, where if they could be taken out then the the two song would sound much closer to each other than one would normally think. The minimal sound that used to describe the Neptunes so well, does not apply as much with the music they are normally making now, but the style they does not seem so radically different, as now instead of only having a couple tracks in a song, they have a few more that invoke a mood ballrooms and freshly pour wine glasses and not hard street music they used to make. The Neptunes are not as popular commercially or critically as they were nearly a decade ago, but between these two songs, they seem to still be producing great songs in their older and new styles.