“We will be,” chirruped a voice from the audience, “soon as you do something entertaining.”

[Video][Website]
[4.67]

Kat Stevens: Angry man and dated-sounding backing! We’re talking early-noughties Prodigy here and no-one wants that. Dot doesn’t sound like he’s having much fun either, unlike on It’s Over (ft Wiley’s Mum) (“you ain’t got no gun/you’re the one that’s getting spun/so you should go suck YOUR MUM“).
[3]

Jer Fairall: Love those intermittent, sputtering drum rolls, but the chorus is pure latter day Eminem, self-aggrandizement replacing self-pity to the benefit of absolutely no one.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Hard to convince you’re hard when you sing so smooth.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The question of authenticity, what is real, and what is false, seems to be a game with elaborate rules and and no real world consequences—the vocals, with its moral problems with being entertained, its protestant belief in work, its continual naming of self, and all of this placed within context of an aggressive, spiky, and intensely repetitive musical bed, does little to further the argument that the calls towards the real are worth our time as critics or listeners. 
[5]

John Seroff: “We ain’t at the dentist but scream out”? The gig is up before we get to the second verse; “Entertained” is little more than get-pumped music for high school kids driving too fast, sugar binging or getting psyched for the football match. Nothing wrong with that, but if this is the new flavour, I’ll stick to Onyx.
[5]

Brad Shoup: It’s a show-off’s statement of intent, a cross between the last Asher Roth and “Mama Said Knock You Out” (which I’d probably give a 6 on Jukebox Klassic). There’s something very Atmosphere about Dot Rotten: not just his singing timbre, but the way this song serves as a contract. “If my attitude stinks I’ma meant to change” — it’s a totally different insecurity than “don’t call it a comeback!”. In fact, “insecurity” is the opposite of the gesture I hope he keeps it together.
[8]

Iain Mew: Dot sacrifices skill and coherence in favour of power, but doesn’t have the music or lines to make it work (bar the hand in socket bzzzt bit, that’s quite funny). The beats are particularly laboured and make it hard to believe that he’ll be rocking anyone.
[3]

Alfred Soto: A not terrible declaration of principles, and a shrewd eliding of the history of British hip-hop of the last twenty years. It’s like Tricky and Dizzee never existed but LL Cool J circa 1990 conquered Britannia.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: I cannot shake my initial impression that I’d probably like this more if I were experiencing it in a giant crowd of wigged-out, thrashing dudes. Catchy, sure — but, OMG it’s such a bro number.
[4]

So by the transitive property, love is money?

[Video][Website]
[6.12]

Anthony Easton: This is most likely a placeholder single, until the new album comes out and something more interesting replaces it. It is perfectly competent, with some lovely bits: some good percussion, beautiful guitar work, and his voice is as delightful as ever, but the writing is anonymous and sentimental in ways that are beneath his genial professionalism.
[6]

John Seroff: It’s likely a mix of the bittersweet homilies and the indie-sounding “Chopsticks” keys under the layers of strings but “Time Is Love” evokes direct comparison to John Mayer and DMB. YMMV as to whether that spoils the sharp performances or you’re able to take solace in the sturm und twang or (like me) you more or less split the difference.
[6]

Brad Shoup: The post-chorus guitar twinning speaks to the theme far better than the actual text. Gorgeous arrangement, though, and it’s kinda neat to hear him make amateur-night transitions between notes.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: “Time is Love” hits close to home and stabs me at the same time because it speaks to experiences and mistakes we’ve all made. Its lyrical concept — that it’s better to spend times with the person who matters — is potentially saccharine, but it’s handled lightly and doesn’t lay the lessons on too thick. But it also soothes me, because its melody isn’t saccharine, it is sweet and humble and beautiful. Its arrangement is surprisingly ornate and delicate like layers of honeycomb beneath Turner’s honeyed voice. It’s also sung with the wisdom of someone who’s let work and the unimportant things get in the way one too many times.
[9]

Alfred Soto: The slide guitar has more treacle than Turner’s voice, but that’s the worst thing about this crowd pleaser, which sports at least two unexpected curlicues from a mandolin and another guitar. A producer for a WB drama looking for an opening credit theme song could do worse. 
[7]

Michaela Drapes: Sorry, Josh — I’m afraid you’re treading in some territory already well-trafficked by Joni Mitchell and Ben Folds telling the other side of this story. Unfortunately, the turgid arrangement and the fact that dude is actually already late and is depending his girl to patiently wait for him to show up are both such turnoffs here.
[2]

Pete Baran: A jolly country roll-along song shouldn’t have such fancy orchestration, is my first response. The break into fiddly Django-esque jazz guitar is arresting because it is so well done. Josh’s syrupy voice doesn’t seem out of place with the juxtaposition, and if this was an experiment, it’s almost wholly successful.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: The warmth in his voice is like a summer’s day: overpowering and sleepy, full of meaningless platitude.
[6]

Next to her.. some kind of light source?

[Video][Website]
[6.10]

Brad Shoup: Having already given Anjuli my first repeat 0, I can now bestow another 10 to my favorite singing Adele. In the execution — if you blur the words — it’s an evangelic Christian worship song with superior low-end. Each verse has a syllogism’s finality; it posits a different kind of tension and resolves it with that repeating, reassuring final line. Initially, I kept replaying the first verse, just savoring the sound of it. “Next to Me” is a straightforward, sturdy piece of Mark Ronson soul, but with one difference: the whip-panned dude in the background, a minor chaotic element Mr. Ronson could never consider. Perhaps producer Shahid Khan want to relieve listeners wearied of all this easily-inferred meaning. It sounds to me like an ecstatic edge to Sandé’s controlled bliss, but maybe that’s bullshit. Still, even where the lyric is a tad undercooked — a redundant “grief,” a misplaced emphasis on “down” — the strength of the melody and Sandé’s knockdown pipes soothe any concerns. I don’t even need a damn bridge.
[10]

Michaela Drapes: Oh, this is difficult. Clearly, Emeli Sandé is talented. She can interpret the hell out of a song. She brings it. The problem is, she just doesn’t write them very well. While this is definitely the polar opposite of the throwback dance-shuffle of “Heaven” (something I think I asked for in my blurb of that track), instead we’re now subjected a track that sounds more like a b-side from Adele or Mary J., or even Alicia Keys — and not a very good one at that. I’m still waiting, Emeli — I know you can do better than this.
[4]

Iain Mew: The Popjustice thing on Emeli’s album being a bait and switch in the same way as Jessie J’s has something to it, but it’s actually too generous. To Sandé, I mean, although the fact that it’s predicated on the idea that Jessie J was at some point good is certainly generous to her too. Anyway, “Do It Like a Dude” was inherently a one-off, a dead end with no realistic way (or at least no commercially viable way) to continue along the same lines. But “Heaven” didn’t have to be a one off at all! Being a serious soul singer songwriter but also having exciting productions could easily have been extended to an album and more! Which, above and beyond the smug preachiness of “Next to Me”, makes releasing something so lifeless even worse.
[2]

Jer Fairall: A hint of vinyl crackle, a sprightly piano jaunt, a faint “hey hey hey” vocal loop and some nouveau soul horns all want to pull this in several intriguing directions at once, but the sentiment and delivery are pure Céline Dion banality and Inspiration, seemingly the work of people resisting every one of the production’s attempts to not be boring.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: In which Emeli and her battalion of industry allies peer at the prospect of becoming the next-Katy-B that Katy was supposed to be, or perhaps an even greater diva, blink, prod at it, then trundle back with their orchestras to over-tattered hymnals and “Rolling in the Deep.”
[6]

John Seroff: “Next to Me” has a certain timelessness and broad appeal that makes me wonder if it’s not destined for greater popularity and potentially noxious levels of exposure. It is a cunningly simple song that would sound equally natural (though doubtless better) coming from Taylor Dayne, John Cougar, Whitney, Adele. There is a constant build that never crests, a simple singalong chorus, less-complicated-than-they-appear vocals, a broad theme that will be easily applied to a lover or a father or a son or the holy spirit. The only thing missing is human spirit, a spark that illuminates more than the formula.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I’m a sucker for steady beats anchoring piano lines, and they both make for ideal aural correlatives to Sandé’s assertions of independence. This builds and swells at the right moment too. If I sound tepid, blame the singer and her writers for constructing a conceit instead of a full performance; the song exists for the chorus payoff.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Beatific house diva dips closer to earth, catches some of Adele’s working-class stomp. Like most British approximations of soul these days, there’s no blues, no vamp to it: it’s all streamlined build-and-release. Which is its own pleasure; but I like it better when she ascends into the stratosphere.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Not everything has to be big, and certainly not the way “Heaven” was big, but “Next to Me” promises hugeness and wimps out. It’s still fond and sweet but in how the chorus seems to be a formality that happens when you run out of words to say in the verses, it’s no more complex as a song than Cover Drive from yesterday. It’s great you’ve found a top bloke, Emeli, but your happiness isn’t making me happy, uplifted and swooning. Maybe learn how to communicate your man-tentment a bit better, listen to some Nicki Minaj or something?
[6]

Anthony Easton: I think it’s on public record that I am a sucker for songs where Him and him are interchangeable. This is just a lovely, and slightly meloncholic desire to know the divine, and to place the divine as a comfort. This hits too many of my buttons to be fully impartial, and the windchimes just send me over the edge.
[9]

Not about to go away, damn it…

[Video][Website]
[6.89]

Jer Fairall: It is as exquisitely executed as it is wholly expected, the sound of an old master addressing spirituality and mortality from his own unique and privileged vantage point. The words avoid blasphemy simply by being so gracefully crafted and delivered; could any other performer render a word as densely loaded as “slave” so free of malice? In fact, it may have have all been so punishingly respectable were it not so flat-out gorgeous, Cohen’s parched Eeyore rasp supported by a gentle cast of Emmylou Harris-like backing vocals, a muted Celtic reel and a piano melody that is less elegiac than it might simply be the very notion of elegy distilled to its purest musical essence.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Cohen’s 2009 tour was a financial and aesthetic coup. Reimagining material in danger of being smothered by cobwebs, Cohen proved a performer of surpassing, surprising vitality. Note I didn’t write “singer.” Husking, blowing, and wheezing this would-be hymn, accompanied by old friend Jennifer Warnes, Cohen projects the granitic splendor of a statue of a Civil War general in the park, such that I can’t tell whether this falls short as a song or whether Cohen can’t coax out its melodic – not to mention conceptual – possibilities. 
[7]

Sabina Tang: If other stans rate this qua stan, I’m going to regret rating it as minor Cohen. The Voice(tm) gets in the way of the hymn this time around, and one doesn’t listen to major Cohen while mentally constructing future cover versions by KD Lang, Patrick Wolf, the cast of Glee, and your high school glee club. Nevertheless, because I have the silly bone of a Leonard Cohen fanatic, I find acute comedy in the thought of a po-faced choir singing punchline couplets like “show me the place where the Word became a man / (pause for effect) show me the place where the suffering began.” Whoa, easy on the uplifting religiosity there!
[7]

Brad Shoup: In the ballad game, grizzled troubadours like Cohen, Waits and Zevon always play with house money. Cohen’s twist is to show a old man in quiet, total thrall. This is not the slavery of the Old Testament, but it’s a relationship not unlike Ruth and Naomi (which Cohen has touched on before). Led by a gospel piano progression, the song takes a decided turn into the Appalachian as the strings bleed in and contend mightily with the dreadfully trad backing vocals. The virtues of Cohen alone should be amply evident by now.
[6]

Pete Baran: When considering new material from a titan, you cannot help try to find its place in the entire body of work, as well as in the current landscape of music. So it’s great to hear that this new single, whilst cutting back on the crazy instrumentation, is still exactly what I’d expect from him in 2012.
[7]

John Seroff: My exposure to Leonard Cohen is pretty minimal beyond the best-known work, so although I know just enough to understand his placement among the pantheon, I feel I can listen to “Show Me the Place” without too great a prejudice of expectation. Honestly, it don’t sound like much. Cohen’s voice has mellowed into a less expressive Tom Waits growl, and his spoken-word dirge lacks the pathos of Glen Campbell or the indignation of Gil-Scott Heron. The much-ballyhooed poetry is — and it feels like shibboleth to even think it — not so hot. I suppose it’s possible that I’m just not getting the song, but I’d feel a lot better about copping to ignorance if I heard a whisper of anything I was missing.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: The beauty of Cohen’s work, and all its layers and interpretations is that his throat always supports whichever one sounds best to you as a listener. When he sings of being a slave in this near-spiritual, I don’t know which kind of divine bondage he’s rhapsodising about, but it’s strangely moving and graceful.
[8]

Anthony Easton: I think it was Cohen who wrote in his early 70s, about talking to his Roshi, about when sexuality flows from the body and is replaced with bodily concerns. Roshi at that point a decade or so older, said that he wasn’t sure, that it hadn’t happened yet. Even if it is my faulty memory, and not actually Cohen, I wonder if finally bodily metaphors as sexual metaphors as spiritual metaphors — the triune mystery that he has put his career on, have loosened. Here. “slave” seems to be less of a sadomasochistic desire, and more of a desire for something like the prayer of humble access, or the more abasing koans. For all of his talk of being stripped, of being torn, or being taken, Cohen in his own peculiar way has been a monster of ego. I wonder what Cohen without his mystical cock swinging would look like?
[7]

Michaela Drapes: How can you possibly turn your back upon the profound wisdom of Leonard Cohen? Even as a young-ish man at the beginning of his career, he was preternaturally wise and world-weary; now, nearly eighty, he’s the closest thing we have to collective musical conscience. So as his gritty, sandpappery voice rasps out this love/sex/death story in classic Cohen hymnal style, you know he’s heard and seen everything of which he speaks. Thank goodness he’s still allowing us to listen.
[9]

Not about the Day of the Dead…

[Video][Website]
[6.40]

John Seroff: Possibly the only good thing about the current Guettaization of pop is that bare-bones SNAP! throwbacks shine that much brighter in comparison. “Get Out My Head” is far from groundbreaking, but it does what much good dance music does: it supplants the critical urge with fast twitch response and mindless disconnect. You guys can go ahead and talk this one out, but I’m going to the bar; anybody want anything?
[7]

Alfred Soto: Not having heard keyboard vamps like this since house music finally soaked through the pop chart in ’91, I was predisposed to like this, and I do — the kind of tuneful anonymity which formed the soundtrack of my early clubbing days.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: This puts the JX in Basement Jaxx.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: Tidily massive, with nothing to spare, this begs to be pulled and stretched and manhandled into something messy and sprawling and a thousand times more epic. (Oh, hey, thanks Joker.) Which is not to say that the bedrock foundation itself isn’t remarkable on its own, but a little more skronky, knob-twisty embellishment wouldn’t hurt to help this sound a little more modern.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Fun fact! When you translate the introductory tapping into Morse code, it spells out “TIME FOR CURRY”!
[4]

Jer Fairall: The use of what has traditionally been a standard mid/downtempo house synth pattern in a track that frantically accelerates and abruptly decelerates at random whim lends the whole thing an volatile sense of momentum, but it is still a patchwork made out of standard, well-worn pieces. Will undoubtedly sound far better in a club setting, where nuance and unpredictability are rarely a concern.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I keep wanting to make a (probably inaccurate) comparison to Katy B, because I hear in this what I heard in “Katy on a Mission”: dance that’s sinuous, not overbearing, made less for clubs than the night streets you could escape to.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Obsessive, and the speed between the chaos and the calm is breakneck. The erotic megalomania found when others colonize your own imagination — and deciding whether to give them permission — is well-encapsulated here.
[7]

Iain Mew: “You just don’t know how much you messed up my flow”. I don’t know, it sounds pretty good to me.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: The basic, minimal thump of the song is a bit disappointing after the music video, in which Mexican Día de los Muertos festivities bring out a lot of the kind of cultural specificity that the music could have used. I guess I don’t fully understand why you would need to shoot “on location in Mexico!” as the official website gushes, when the end result sounds like you never left your Bristol studio.
[6]

Not about sullen vampires…

[Video][Website]
[3.36]

Edward Okulicz: A bright pastiche of 2011-era pop’s awkward rainbow, this has been focus-grouped, mixed and remixed to within an inch of its life for radio. But there are two kinds of radio hits; the first bounds out of the speakers and makes you move, brightens your day, encourages singing along, and the second blares incessantly like a droning co-worker saying the same thing over and over again.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: Too slow, too bland, too sanitized — you can’t dance to this, the vocalists sound entirely unconvincing, and it’s all so terribly immature, emotionally, sonically and lyrically.
[0]

Anthony Easton: There is nothing to mark Amanda Reifer’s vocals as distinct, or if not distinct then worthy of a pop song, and she seems to know this, moving steadily and consistently without much passion through a field of non-signifying electronic blankness. There is no there here.
[2]

John Seroff: Rihanna backwash over Control+V Caribbean rhythms and Brand X guest spot adds up to soulless pap. Not worth the effort it would take to get indignant, and surely not interesting enough to merit more than two sentences.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Audio perlite: lightweight, fire-retardant. Are they going dippy out of some misplaced devotion to Rihanna’s strengths?
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: If the goal’s to spawn more Rihannas so the one we’ve got doesn’t work herself into the ER, that’s a lofty, necessary goal — but why bother with differentiated names? Or material this perky?
[5]

Jer Fairall: Bright, heartfelt and rather melodically graceful, but the vocals are as laboured as the singer’s awkward use of the word “recently,” with a toss up between the girl’s Paula Abdul squawk and the boy’s drenched-in-autotune rap verse as the bigger anvil hung around the neck of this otherwise charming composition.
[5]

Pete Baran: A remarkably unremarkable track, with a bold, big, go-for-the-chorus vibe, but I like it a lot more than I thought I would. The requisite cricket joke would give it a [4], but I think it’s worth more.
[6]

Kat Stevens: Youngsters smiling sweetly and slowly singing about schoolkid daydreams; if it wasn’t for the sledgehammer synth jerkiness, this lot could be the Bajan California Dreams. Except I don’t think they ever played cricket in California Dreams.
[6]

Iain Mew: I keep trying to think of a reason why this completely weak and uninteresting song called “Twilight” would get so popular apart from… well, you know, and failing. Which makes me take against it more than its harmless ineffectualness probably deserves.
[3]

Alfred Soto: In the sterling tradition of Big Mountain’s cover of “Baby I Love Your Way” — the soundtrack to a resort tiki bar as happy hour ends.
[1]

Welcome to Cash Money, Mr. Mystikal. For your first task, you must do a single with Birdman…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.00]

Edward Okulicz: I was down with the sweetly grainy, whiney backing. I was down with Mystikal getting his Cookie Monster on like “Shake Ya Ass” was only yesterday (and man, “Shake Ya Ass” could totally have been released yesterday). Then Wayne actually dropped “Robitussin” into a verse full of non-sequitur statements of bad ass-ness (Pain killers! Pistol-whipping! Killing people!), which is not only cringe-worthy, but downright lame and dorky. Also, let’s just say repetition doesn’t do Birdman’s chorus any favours. There’s a tight three-thirty in here if you thin the herd a bit first.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Heaving and burping like a frog sunning himself on a lily pad, Mystikal is as world-class a sound effect as he was in 2000. Wayne is Wayne, but less so; he’s lost rhythm and verve. Meanwhile Birdman plays Zeppo Marx and does less well.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: Birdman has the particular talent of being so bad at rapping that a listener might reasonably suspect him of being too successful to even bother trying. He has such a palpable indolence when on the mic that his prowess ceases to be an issue; it seems impressive that he could be bothered to show up. (Let alone make words rhyme — which he never does.) Mystikal, by contrast, always sounds like he’s trying, which is part of his charm: that frenetic growl he spatters over tracks is twice as appealing because it sounds so exhausting. “Original” has the wrong combination, however: too little of Mystikal’s effort and too much of Birdman’s stalling. It also has a verse from Lil Wayne that is better than much of what he’s done lately. Sadly, it’s still rather dismal. Cash Money should have given Weezy the day off and let Mystikal grumble some more.
[5]

Michelle Myers: I do sort of wish this was just a Mystikal song. His frantic delivery and the ridiculous trunk-knock subbass take back to the late ’90s so hard. Am I being pandered to here? Oh well.
[7]

Iain Mew: I love the intoxicating high pitched sample and Mystikal’s mad and unpredictable ranting, funny and scary in roughly equal measure. The chorus doesn’t do much though and any momentum comes screeching to a total halt once Lil Wayne comes in and the beat drops out.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Welcome to hip-hop in the ’10s, Mystikal. Melancholy tune featuring a squealing, streaky figure. I don’t really want or expect him to match his surroundings with introspection or remorse, so his Lady Macbeth act is a heady choice indeed. I dunno who compared him to a composer when DMX is clearly at the fingertips. More than any rapper I can think of, Mystikal is a shadowboxer: eyes twitching nervously, mind uneasy, his hands ready to protect himself. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to realize that the battleground has moved, and the line about feeling like a political refugee gains a sick power for his sounding dead serious. Wayne’s genial brand of craziness doesn’t have much effect on his labelmate, an unfortunate feces joke notwithstanding.
[5]

Frank Kogan: My grandfather was an actual political refugee (I don’t really know the story, but in Minsk I think, in 1912 or so, he was president or vice-president of his university’s Social Democrats, a banned organization, and he was arrested and sent to prison in Siberia, from which he escaped, came to America by way of Vladivostok and Seattle, ended up in Chicago), and the activities he was imprisoned for derived from a concern for social justice. He died when I was three, and my being his grandson doesn’t give me any special authority, but it is 500 degrees of problematic when this track starts “I’m a political refugee, that’s how I felt.” No! Mystikal was in jail for sexual assault and extortion. He believed his hairstylist had ripped him off, and he and two bodyguards, as cold punishment, forced her to have oral sex with the three of them. Now I don’t think the guy should be blacklisted, or dismissed out of hand. I’ve always liked the frenetic JB voice he puts on things. But if he’s going to rap about the sexual hypocrisy of white authorities (“Call me porch monkey, call me jigaboo/When you know you wanna fuck my woman, eat my barbecue”), I’d sure like to hear actual self-knowledge. “They constantly fucking us up/That’s why we buck wild” isn’t it. Strangely, right out of prison, he was asked if he thought rappers were unfairly targeted and he said, “That’s an easy excuse to say that, but we got to take responsibility for what we do too, you know? We can’t be fools.” (At 5:40 here.) I’ve listened to six interviews of his today, which is hardly exhaustive. He sounded likable, didn’t seem a monster, and said again that he’d made stupid decisions, that he owed his family. What he never owned up to was that he’d terrorized and violated and humiliated another human being. As for this track: Birdman’s a dead weight, Wayne’s spacey in a half-back-to-interesting way, and Mystikal’s energy is good and his braggadocio isn’t half bad. But wisdom should take him away from bragging. Would be a 5.0 without the backstory.
[2]

The thing about youth culture is, I don’t understand it…

[Video][Website]
[4.30]

Josh Langhoff: So are these guys like the British System of a Down, or what?
[6]

Brad Shoup: As content-light as the pop and indie-rock music their fans surely disdain. At least hardcore kept finding ways to make Reagan-baiting funny — or, rather, they let anti-Reaganism stand as substitute for a reconstructed outlook in all spheres. Ugh… just typing that made me feel two decades older. I dig the chorus, hate the chants, find the plodding riff — translated through about ten filters and three instruments — amusing, and would rather spend time with Appalachian Terror Unit, even if they fueled their Hummers with dog blood. The ferocity of their convictions translates into the tunes.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: This is less a song than a time warp. My age: 14; my location: Virginia boarding school; my personality: blithering asshole. Before my first-ever roommate moved into the infirmary due to my being a blithering asshole, she kept a steady musical diet of punk, J-rock, ’80s Weird Al and They Might Be Giants that outranked my unbalanced diet of Sarah Brightman and ’00s R&B for speaker listening. (The headphone stipulation went into effect day three and was discarded, mostly by me, a week later.) At one point, her favorite song was Bad Religion’s “Kyoto Now,” which I always thought was about some dude called Giordano, being a teenage asshole who got into the school with more working knowledge of belly shirts and Web forums than global warming. But anyway, I heard that theme and every other part of this — the metalcore drums, the growled vocals, the guitar timbre, the spoken-word British guys, probably even the melodramatic “ICE!” — from the other side of the increasingly embattled room, and it is freaking me out. If you ever read this, Kate, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I went on to have a job either. What do you think of Enter Shikari?
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: The piecemeal components transition about as smoothly as does clicking on a link from the “More recommended videos” sidebar on YouTube. My favorite part is the squally At The Drive-In throwback that kicks things off; the most baffling is the Mike Skinner-esque spoken word section, which I suspect might be “political” if I bothered deciphering it. Elsewhere, the dubstep bass and nails-on-a-chalkboard synths are much more welcome than the Kaiser Chiefsian Brit-rock interludes. Uhh… needs more drops?
[5]

Iain Mew: There’s a certain tension between message and medium here. The song leaps around all over the place between different sound attack modes to protest against war and Arctic drilling. They say no to “military hardware”, but musically cluster bomb bass drops and guttural battle cry screaming get a big YES. It’s sort of telling that the single best part of the song is when they play the role of their targets — something about screaming “There’s oil in the ICE!/There’s oil in my EYES!” is just really great fun. I’m not sure whether they would be pleased that I find the whole thing even more silly than it is enjoyable, but it works for me.
[8]

Jer Fairall: The crazed lurch of the music and hysterical delivery of the vocals remind me of my current favourite “post-hardcore” act Future Of The Left, and in “Arguing With Thermometers” (a very FOTL title, by the way) they seem pissed off about the right things — “that’s the sound of another door shutting in the face of progress” is exactly the kind of portentous/pretentious phrase I might have Sharpied onto my notebook during the gloom of high school. The intermittent guttural belches and some ugly-ass synths push this a bit too far into bonehead territory for comfort, though, and I hated that whole monolithic, muted guitar sound enough during the heyday of nu-metal to ever want to experience it again.
[5]

Zach Lyon: This is what bothers me about people complaining about the braggadocio of hip hop: watch this video and tell me these little shits don’t love themselves like only misanthropic white boys can.
[2]

John Seroff: No need to wait for next year’s DJ Earworm mix; here’s the prognosticated sounds of 2012 right now: System of a Down, Skrillex, Helmet, Limp Bizkit, The Bravery. I guess those Mayans really were on to something. One bonus point earned for actually giving a shit about the state of the world; that’s a rare find these days.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: An answer to a question nobody asked. Namely, “What would happen if you combined death metal, haircut indie, particularly farty brostep, and late-career The Streets?” Avoids being irredeemable if only because they makes “Arguing With Thermometers” seem like a natural mix of all of the worst things ever, instead of something forced.
[2]

Michaela Drapes: Ok, ‘fess up — who arranged for a humanitarian airdrop of the entire back catalogs of Static X, Deftones and Rage Against the Machine in upper middle class suburbs after the London riots? I was really hoping that this blurb was going to be my chance to name check Kula Shaker. I am extremely disappointed that this is not the case.
[0]

We prefer our Nicki undiluted…

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Kat Stevens: D:
[10]

Michaela Drapes: Nicki Minaj accurately portrays that moment that I fully believe happens at some point in every woman’s life, that moment that you really just want to get in some chick’s face and scream “YOU A STUPID HOE!” while having a dayglo-sick seizure of rage. I’m sorry, I’m not apologizing for this — I’ve been there. And any woman who says she hasn’t is lying. (There, I said it.) Also, extra one million points for excessive use of the entire Lime Crime makeup line and what’s probably some custom leather from Zana Bayne.
[9]

Sabina Tang: I wouldn’t normally derive this much hilarity from a woman calling another woman a stupid hoe for three minutes, but Nicki is so unabashedly, unrestrainedly absurdist here that one can’t picture her in a queen-bitch slap-down position, despite her own insistence. Jennifer’s the putative sweetheart, and Angelina’s too cool for school, but Nicki’s like that girl who showed up at the senior prom drunk, sporting pink hair and a bumblebee costume. She’s outside the power dichotomy, and thus one suspects her of truthmongering, whoever her abstract target happens to be. Plus, 1x bonus point for being “the highest single-video VEVO number in 24 hours EVER!” with a dislike-to-like ratio of 2:1. I’d like to think that has more to do with the ARGH NIGHTMARE FUEL EYES than the actual song, but no — this ain’t no “Super Bass.” And I’m more than fine with that.
[8]

Iain Mew: The video has actually done a great job in giving me more of a way into this. The rapid flashing of images and sharp intake of breath draws attention to the sheer force of the long held “woooooooouuuuuuuuuld” with frantic claps and whistles beneath, and the release of tension at its end. From an appreciation of that all of the other stuff started dropping into place and… well, it doesn’t all fit perfectly, but it’s a much more enjoyable mess than first impressions suggested.
[7]

Andy Hutchins: Speeding up and tweaking Diplo’s “Slight Work” beat and giving it to Nicki is a good enough theft that I’m not going to hold it against Diamond Kuts, the (female!) Philly DJ/producer who is responsible for “Stupid Hoe.” Nicki uses it to both abuse all of her more outlandish tropes (“I wish a bitch wouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuld”) and wink at them (“one, two, three, do the Nicki Minaj blink!”), and it’s all in service of a gender-bending Li’l Kim diss from Roman Zolanski that sounds best in the breakdown, which caroms from Nicki sing-songing to Nicki singing to verbal diarrhea to the entirely unnecessary “I am the female Weezy” clarification. No one else was aiming for that title, Nicki, and, besides, being Nicki Minaj should really be more than enough.
[6]

Zach Lyon: Time to make a mental bookmark for Diamond Kuts. Didn’t matter who was rapping over it; beat is unimpeachable. Nicki’s guns are blazing for a good minute or so, but it’s sort of sad to me that it’s still directed at Lil’ Kim. Also sad that every single woman in hip hop (and I say “single” because there’s only ever one at a time) aren’t taken seriously if they aren’t constantly referring to their diznicks. I really hope Nicki tries to be more than the female Weezy.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: I’d get more out of T. Dunham’s wobbling, metallic beat if the Neptunes hadn’t used the same palette to less stilted effect eight years ago on Missy Elliott’s “On and On.” But Minaj is more dexterous than Missy ever was, and her elastic vocal chords do much to animate the instrumental. At times, the verve arrives in lyrical form — I enjoy the playful simplicity of “Who’s gassing this ho: BP?” — but more often, it’s in the plasticity of Nicki’s personae. The best part might be the self-parody of “one, two, three; do the Nicki Minaj blink,” but the fun doesn’t end there. It’s not every performer who could morph that “Stupid hoes is my enemy” nursery rhyme into a dancehall toast with just the faintest switch in vocal tone, and few others would think to follow that up with the exercise in silliness that is the sung final chorus. There, Minaj sounds like a bored kid teasing her little sister, not an MC gunning for the top title.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Minimalist weirdness of the circa 2001 Missy and Timbaland variety, an eleven year gulf Nicki bridges only via name checks of Brad Pitt’s then-and-now love interests. Nicki doesn’t need to identify herself as Angelina for that to be obvious, as she is clearly living in the right now, and while, sure, it is the right now of post-BP and post-MJ, it is also the right now of Nicki-the-Female-Weezy and Nicki at the Superbowl with Madonna. More important, though, it is the right now of a black female pop superstar adopting the alter ego of a gay male Übermensch and actually getting away with it. That’s enough, for me, to make right now and “Stupid Hoe,” no matter what else you can say about either, both feel pretty damn awesome.
[8]

Alfred Soto: If it did more than just echo T.I.’s “Bring Em Out,” I’d likely be this song’s most fervent supporter. But from its dated references (Angelina? Jennifer?) and slang (“diznick”?!) to rubberband vowels, it’s guaranteed to annoy, so much so that I wonder if in a complimentary mood I might laud it as the sort of Dada moment that enlivened M.I.A.’s ///Y/. So, yes, let me settle on this judgment then: a sound collage by an artist enraptured by performing, never more transported than when in the last third she affects a dancehall voice and reminds us she’s a stupid hoe herself.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Lil Kim? Jennifer Aniston? What’s next, shitting on Sassy C? Maybe caring about celebrities is a natural outgrowth of caring about musicians, but this practically screams “mixtape escapee”. The “stupid hoes is my enemy” dancehall/jump rope bit was kinda great; can I get a whole song with that? 
[3]

John Seroff: Here is what mostly wasted talent ultimately nets Nicki Minaj, the master of 1000 nasal voices, at her likely apex: juvenile, over caffeinated novelty rap, irritating and devoid of verve. She’s not just the Female Weezy; Nicki is the exemplar of the despicable Young Money aesthetic that mistakes laziness for non sequitur, speed for technique, success for talent, cynicism for swag. “Stupid”‘s postmodern lack of engagement drives me nuts, mostly because I really want to like both it and Nicki. High-velocity, repetitive, sloppy, pseudo-outsider nutball playground rhymes really push my pleasure buttons so I get the reference points but this shit is not bananas; Nicki does not got your money. What she’s got is music for seventh graders with social disorders to scream angrily at each other on the short bus. What I’ve got is a fading headache and Cloreen Baconskin on repeat to clean my palate of this artless, lifeless horseshit.
[1]

Jamieson Cox: I want to assign two different scores to “Stupid Hoe”: one corresponding to the song’s first 45 seconds, and another for the remainder. The former segment features Nicki firing on all cylinders, tossing out silly similes and chuckle-worthy disses in equal measure with the sort of hyperkinetic energy and flow that was so endearing on early cuts like “Itty Bitty Piggy.” (There’s some similarities between each track’s percussive backing melange, too.) But after that prolonged “would”, Nicki begins to overwhelm and detract from the proceedings with the sheer force of her personality. The multiple voices/personas are a cute novelty, but there’s not much substance behind them in “Stupid Hoe.” And as for that last line? There’s a world of difference between Wayne’s genuine, compelling strangeness and her contrived quirks on tracks like this. Show, don’t tell.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: If nothing else, “Stupid Hoe” is a sign that now that she’s conquered the charts, it’s time for Dear Old Nicki to make a reappearance: its clearest antecedent is Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape track “Itty Bitty Piggy.” The hyperactive yo-yo beat and whistles and endless handclaps and whooping are the best beat she’s had in ages — a hyperactive playground for Roman Zolanski to clamber over — and from the stretched out “wooooouuuuullllllld” to the jump-rope chant that leads us out of the track, there’s little here that disappoints. That the video proves Nicki was secretly an Animorph all along is a bonus. So why only an [8]? Because the Ben Aqua #jukewerk Remix exists.
[8]

Nothing like a double shot of Nicki to start your Friday morning…

[Video][Website]
[4.22]

Alfred Soto: Not with that shouting and choice of producer.
[1]

Iain Mew: Strongly disguising Nicki Minaj for all but fifteen seconds at the end of your uninspired dance pop does at least make those fifteen seconds sound really exciting by comparison.
[4]

John Seroff: Whatever perceptible heat remains in “Turn Me On” is little more than residual warmth from the copy machine. Nicki lends little more than her name and Guetta is absolutely in cruise control. Utterly seamless, like a Twinkie.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The precise sound of club desperation, between the plea of a melody repeated so often there’s no way anyone’s listening, to Nicki Minaj thinking she ever needs to sing on a Guetta track, to “I’m too young to die,” the polar opposite of Lana that ends up there anyway.
[4]

Sabina Tang: Possibly the intentional opposite of “Stupid Hoe.” You can tell perfectly well it’s Nicki Minaj belting it out like an anonymous house diva for hire, so for 70 per cent of the song you’re sitting there like, is she… going to… do… stuff…? And she does rap, eventually, for like two lines. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point otherwise. Sonically, it’s all right, but I’ve yet to discern a point in Guetta at all, so no spoiler there.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: This doesn’t inspire the gut feeling of revulsion I get from the standard Guetta tricks, which is as good a start as any. The lyrics have this weird drifting metaphor that starts off with Nicki needing her boy to be a doctor who eventually morphs into superhero and then maybe a mad scientist. In this context, “make me come alive, come on and turn me on” would make for a magnificent music video, but she’s already done the Bride of Frankenstein thing on SNL. We don’t nearly get enough rapping on “Turn Me On,” especially in comparison to the last Guetta/Minaj collaboration, but that opening synth figure is almost subtle and the chorus is infinitely better than Flo Rida’s, so it pretty much evens out.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: Nicki Minaj and her multiple personalities are “feeling weird”? You don’t say! Honestly, I’ll take her any way she wants to be packaged: rapping alter egos, Eurotrash Love Parade diva, alternate-reality Cyndi Lauper — it matters not. As long as she continues to effectively drown out Beyoncé and Gaga and Rihanna and Katy Perry, I’m happy.
[9]

Brad Shoup: She whips from an undefined melancholy to some kind of angry challenge in the chorus, neither of which is a look Guetta can get from Taio. But Taio would have a dude to handle saying “I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I.”
[4]

Josh Langhoff: If David Guetta came up to me and said, “You wanna completely suppress your vibrant personality and appear on one of my tracks?” I’d probably take him up on it. Nothing to lose except money. What’s the equivalent for those of us who are not hilarious Harajuku goddesses? James Patterson asking one of us to ghostwrite? His chapters are so short, I bet you get a real sense of accomplishment.
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