[IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING]
Much respect to the DJ, but this classic condiment has a spicy backstory that long predates Kung Fu Kenny's viral shoutout
Thousands of years ago, before God’s son roamed the planet wearing chancletas, mustard was king of the spice world.
Hebrews cooked with it. Egyptians chewed the seeds. And people from Rome to China grounded it into a paste. It was more than an ingredient: You could use it to treat wounds, to stimulate an appetite, even to soothe a scorpion bite. Eventually pepper came along, and mustard had some competition. But by then, the practice of mixing it with unripe grape juice to create a condiment had stuck—the word "mustard" is rooted in mustum, the Latin word for the juice.
While mustard was in use around the globe, no one loved it as much as the French. (This is a law of science: If it smells weird, the French love it. See Epoisses cheese.) French monasteries supported themselves by selling moutarde. One 14th century pope even hired his underqualified nephew to be vice president of "fulfillment," known otherwise as Grand Mustard-Maker. That nephew lived near Dijon, which effectively made Dijon—where mustard was made with vinegar, like Eastern Carolina barbecue sauce—the mecca of modern mustard.
France even passed a law making Dijon the only place you could make mustard. But stuck in its ways, Dijon mustard didn't change much, and eventually England took over the mustard game by producing a milder version of the spread that didn't offend British palates. ("Of course they did," said tikka masala.)
For the next 140 years, British and French mustard ignored the obvious superiority of Chinese mustard and went back and forth in the world's most boring rivalry, the only high point of which was the Grey Poupon commercials of the 1980s. (Also, the name Grey Poupon.)
In 1990, though, French mustard scored a game-changing victory: A Jamaican couple in Los Angeles named their son Dijon. Not Colman's, not French's, not even Poupon. Dijon. Much like his ancient predecessors, this Dijon created something flavorful by grinding the seeds of disparate musical sources into something entirely new, and spread it on songs that traveled around the planet. Ultimately, of course, those songs landed back in Los Angeles—which henceforth shall be the official and permanent home of MUSTAAAAAAAAARD.
—Peter Rubin
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You can experience the apex of mustard's history at the 2:05 mark of "tv off," Kendrick Lamar's crowd-pleasing cut from his new album, GNX, produced by the sauce gawd himself, DJ Mustard.
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