Mustard: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Hidden up a wooded hill in the sprawling backyard of his suburban Los Angeles estate, Dijon “Mustard” McFarlane is on the tennis court, perfecting his forehand.

“I’m an extremist,” the 34-year-old producer explains as he warms up his top spin. “I play every day, sometimes two times a day.” The L.A.-born musician, who shot to prominence at 21 when he produced Tyga’s 2011 hit “Rack City,” beckons his coach to serve again. After some rallying, Mustard slices a ball that nearly hits the Billboard cameraman kneeling beneath him, trying to get a close-up shot. “Oh, sorry! Man, you’re brave for sitting there,” Mustard says.

“I play, too; it’s cool,” the photographer replies, unfazed. “Aight, you’re one of us,” Mustard says with a grin, pointing at the man with his racket. For a second, it feels like the sportier version of a knighting ceremony.

He may still be polishing his tennis game, but after more than a decade of making hip-hop hits, Mustard scored an indisputable ace this year, reaching his highest career peak to date as the beat-maker behind Kendrick Lamar’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Not Like Us” — the biggest hit in Lamar’s spring beef with Drake. On the track, which cemented Lamar’s victory in the court of public opinion, the Pulitzer Prize winner is at his most venomous, using Mustard’s pop earworm of an instrumental as a Trojan horse for accusing Drake of being an Atlanta “colonizer” who steals sounds from local rappers and to resurface the serious allegations of Drake’s supposed predilection for underage girls.

Read the full Billboard cover story here.