Photograph: Kanya Iwana
When Jesus told his followers to have “faith the size of a mustard seed” he was partly thinking ahead to the career of LA hitmaker Dijon Isaiah McFarlane, whose 2014 debut album predicted 10 Summers of chart domination. But rare is the rap producer who can stay hot for more than a few seasons. For two years Mustard’s signature sound – a minimal concoction of 808 handclaps, booming bass and Dorito-crunch snares – filled the charts with club-rap-R&B crossovers (Tinashe’s 2 On, Jeremih’s Don’t Tell ’Em). But by 2016’s Cold Summer his era was all but over.
Yet the prophecy came true – Not Like Us, the killer blow in Kendrick Lamar’s ugly beef with Drake, became Mustard’s first-ever US No 1 in May. Sadly, it’s the kind of club-rap ripper that’s in short supply on his fourth album, an occasionally biographical tale of childhood nostalgia, middle-age melancholy and returning to the church – albeit voiced by 20 guests, from longtime rap foil Ty Dolla $ign to soul royalty Charlie Wilson.
There’s no sign of the skeletal weirdness that made 2013’s Ketchup mixtape so arresting, but there are cloying love songs, odes to Mom and thanks to God. The clicks and claps are too often drowned out by familiar ideas – chipmunk vocals, voicemail messages, ghetto gospel harmonies. But when he reins it in, he gets closer to that special sauce: Migos’s Quavo dusts laconic charisma on to strip-club jam One of Them Ones, while Vince Staples and Schoolboy Q offer cool respite on the deep-rolling G-funk of Pressured Up.
• The headline of this article was amended on 26 July 2024. The album title is Faith of a Mustard Seed, not Faith in a Mustard Seed as an earlier version said.
