Fresh off the release of his debut album last week, DJ Mustard spoke with Big Boy on Power 106 about the title, his progression as a producer, and hanging up on Jay Z when he thought he was being prank called.
“I just felt like L.A. had a long drought for a long time with the music scene,” he said of the album’s title. “When I said 10 Summers I didn’t just mean myself, I meant like me, YG, Nipsey. We been working hard for a long time. I just felt the need to let everybody know that we gon’ have it for the next ten summers.”
Breaking down his relationship with YG, Mustard explained their do-it-yourself beginnings working together on mixtapes.
“I just wanted to deejay and be like DJ Drama,” he said. “When [I got] YG’s mixtape I just did a mixtape, trying to be Drama, thinking I had a Gangsta Grillz or something. So I gave it to them and YG actually burned them himself. He passed them out and before you knew it my name was like heavy in the streets and his too. We actually finally met and then he went to jail. I knew of him but I didn’t know him. I was always from the West side, he’s from Compton. I was doing everything from here to Hollywood and then he was all the way in Compton.”
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Detailing his recent success, the producer also explained a wave of requests for beats following the release of Tyga’s “Rack City.”
“After ‘Rack City,’” he said of the point when he felt the industry as a whole took note. “When they started figuring it out. I had to put in my work…Everybody wanted a ‘Rack City,’ they all want the same thing. It took like 2 Chainz and Jeezy to do other things on my beats instead of the ‘Rack City’ sound. I feel like if I would have kept doing that I wouldn’t been [here].”
Near the end of the interview, DJ Mustard also remembered hanging up on Jay Z the first time they spoke on the telephone.
“I did that to Jay Z,” he said. “It was early in the morning. He called, matter fact, he emailed. He’s like, ‘Yo, this is Jay as in Z, do you got time to talk?’ I’m like, ‘What?’ I’m looking at the email. So I showed my girl, like, ‘You see this?’ So I hit my manager like, ‘What’s Jay email?’ He [told me] whatever it was, the same email. So I hit him back like, ‘Yup.’ Like two seconds later he called. I’m like, ‘Hello?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, this is Jay.’ I’m like, ‘No it ain’t.’ Click. I hung up. Then he called back, he was like, ‘Nah, this is really me.’”
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He added, “I like it at Roc Nation, I get to do what I want like drop albums a day early for free.”
RELATED: 6 Things We Learned From DJ Mustard’s “10 Summers” Listening Session
