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Kendrick Lamar reportedly felt like the manga protagonist Goku after hearing DJ Mustard's beats for the song TV Off for the first time. DJ Mustard revealed this information in an interview with Grammy, published on January 27, 2025. Mustard has been nominated for Producer of the Year at the Grammys.
TV Off (stylized as tv off) is the seventh track from Kendrick Lamar's surprise November 2024 album GNX, featuring Lefty GunPlay and produced by Mustard. During the interview, the producer said he constantly sent Lamar beat samples, adding that TV Off was a mix of two separate beats that the rapper connected.
Mustard was also asked who came up with the idea of having Kendrick Lamar yell his name on TV Off. He replied that Lamar was behind his iconic eight-count "Mustard" yell in the song, saying that the rapper added the adlib after the track's beats made him feel like Dragon Ball's protagonist.
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"I asked him, "Man, what made you do that?" And he said, "When I heard the beat, I just felt like Goku or something." I was like, "What?" And he explained, "Yeah, when I hear certain s**t on your beats, it brings out something else in me, so I just did whatever I felt." I was like, "Wow, that's crazy"," Mustard said.
For the unversed, Goku is the main protagonist of Akira Toriyama's manga series, Dragon Ball. The manga ran between 1984 and 1995, leading to several spin-offs and an anime called Dragon Ball Z.
The manga follows Goku, a Saiyan (an extraterrestrial race in the Dragon Ball universe), as he navigates life from childhood to adulthood in search of the seven Dragon Balls to summon the wish-granting dragon Shenron.
Goku is famously known for his Super Saiyan ability
Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama, who died in March 2024, first introduced Goku during the last chapter of his Dr. Slump manga, as per the Dragon Ball fandom wiki. Dragon Ball was loosely based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, with the protagonist originally meant to be stylized as a monkey in the manga's first draft.
However, Toriyama decided to make the protagonist a full human in the third draft. Goku's real name is Kakarot, derived from the word carrot, as Toriyama named most Saiyans after vegetables.
Despite being an extraterrestrial being, Kakarot was sent to Earth by his parents Bardock and Gine, and was raised by his adoptive grandfather Gohan, who gave him the name Son Goku.
When Gohan first found him, the protagonist retained his hostile nature programmed into him by the Saiyans. However, he suffered from a head injury as a child, which altered his memory and caused him to lose his destructive nature.
One of Goku's defining characteristics is his Super Saiyan ability, which allows a Saiyan to achieve overwhelming power. He was the second Saiyan to achieve the Super Saiyan form, following Yamoshi, the first Super Saiyan who existed nearly a thousand years before the beginning of Dragon Ball Z.
During a Q&A published in a 2017 Dragon Ball Super volume, Akira Toriyama explained the process behind a Saiyan achieving Super Saiyan state, writing:
“It’s not like anyone can become a Super Saiyan through training an anger. In order to become a Super Saiyan, one’s body must contain something called ‘S-cells.’ Once these S-Cells reach a certain amount, a trigger such as anger will explosively increase the S-Cells and cause a change in the body: that’s Super Saiyan.”
Goku's first Super Saiyan transformation came after Frieza (Dragon Ball's major antagonist) killed Krillin (his close friend) in chapter 317 of the Dragon Ball manga, titled Life or Death, published in March 1991. The Super Saiyan state was reportedly heavily influenced by Bruce Lee, with Toriyama also using the martial artist and actor as a reference to draw the protagonist in the state.
In other news, Kendrick Lamar has been nominated for seven Grammys, including five for Not Like Us.
Meanwhile, Mustard was also nominated for Producer of the Year in the non-classical category. The producer took home his first Grammy in 2019 for the Ella Mai song Boo'd Up, which won Best R&B song.
