In which we reveal our stances on cursing at children…

[Video][Website]
[6.70]

Alfred Soto: When I last heard Dizzee he had recorded the only listenable Calvin Harris collaborations to date, for which he was duly recorded in his homeland. So I regret to say that he’s substituted telling for showing — where once he let the most disgusting distorted bass of the 2000’s sully his monologues, now he’s required to remind us, like a boy caught by his girlfriend staring at a waiter’s ass, that he loves them. Right.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I refuse to believe that Dizzee thinks that consuming uppers and loving the bass is a zero-sum game, I also refuse to believe anyone thinks that Dizzee has a bass problem, or that people have whinged about it around him — straw-person argument in favour of total aggro is profoundly silly, but him saying “dirty stinkin’ bass” could work in a much better context.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: The irony here is that the bassline is little more than an afterthought. The star is Dizzee’s buffoonish bass evangelist character, and as such the track doesn’t work nearly as well without the video. That’s not to say it doesn’t stand up well on its own – there mightn’t be a better use of epistrophe this year than “The other day I got an ASBO order; and I think it’s well out of order” — while it’s no “White Lines”, it does at least kick Example’s more recent and misguided “Just Say No” update into a cocked hat.
[7]

Iain Mew: Rather punk in its one note, one joke simplicity, and it is a fine joke with a fine whacking beat behind it. The problem is that it’s three minutes long, and with next to no progression in either of them it’s badly in need of being cut down by a further minute or two.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Because I’m a dinosaur, I tend to hear the track before watching the video. Look what happens when I don’t. Still, there’s a decent chance I’d love this regardless — when a musician is funny, it’s a thing to be treasured. “Bassline Junkie” clings fiercely to its unthreatening territory with a mean mug, dumb rhymes and a tight sphincter. Oh, and the bass is filthy too.
[9]

Ian Mathers: I’m sure some people consider it surplus to requirements, but I’m only giving this one extra point for the fact that the video (especially the first minute or so) brings me so much delight. It would be worth watching even if the song was just so-so, but the bassline and Dizzee’s delivery — joyful, aggressive, strident, defiant — make for a perfect sermon. “Tell ’em again!”
[9]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Dizzee never stopped being the Dizzee we all fell in love with – what happened is that his raging yelp was attached to cartoonish subject matter. Tongue’n’Cheek’s “Road Rage” is the best song he’s released in the past five years because it successfully takes grime’s anti-social edge into overblown territory, especially when attached to excitable Baltimore club, one of the most youthful sounds in the world to this day. “Bassline Junkie” almost gets away with its concept of bass music being akin to an A class drug by blowing up its sense of humour to pure absurdity, like when he threatens someone’s life for momentarily stopping the track (ten times better in the amazing Megaforce-directed video, when he swears out a child). That’s the word, though: “almost”. The song never develops past being a curio at best and a novelty at worst.
[6]

Will Adams: Dizzee Rascal’s vision of a drug-free rave appeals to me a lot (clearly), and it would sound preachy were it not balanced with some genuinely funny moments and a great hook – from now on I think I’ll enter clubs by chanting BIG DIRTY STINKIN’ BASS. The bassline is really the star here, though, starting small but slowly morphing into a beast that overtakes the whole scene. The entire package is quite off-kilter, so I can’t imagine playing it for friends at a party, but sometimes it’s nice to have a song that’s yours alone.
[8]

Andy Hutchins: Dizzee having fun is one of my favorite things in music, period, and the commitment to the it-should-really-be-stale joke here (which is tripled in the very funny video), which doubles as winking satire about music changing a life that works whether or not Dizzee means it, is certainly evidence that he can still skate on bass. The bass itself farting out of every orifice of the track sure helps make his case, too.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Low-end dependency is a conceit neither clever nor particularly original (it dates at least back to Josh Abrahams in 1998) but Dizzee Rascal gets a lot of mileage out of the gag. The chirpy, very British interjections on the hook help, pulling up only just shy of “pip-pip” or “tally-ho.” I like also how fetid he makes his compulsion sound, wallowing in the scatological qualities of the adjectives in the “big, dirty, stinkin’ bass” hook. I wouldn’t call toilet humor subtle, but there’s a sly malodorousness to “I like my basslines fuckin’ filthy.”
[8]

You were trouble when you walked in…

[Video][Website]
[5.12]

Anthony Easton: Can women make some sort of solemn vow never to fuck Cam’ron again? 
[0]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: On one of the many Youtube uploads of “You Know This”, a commenter posts that Araabmuzik’s instrumental “sounds like cnn beat”. Youtube grammar aside, that seems a fair conclusion: the pillowy bass drums, heavy snares and gentle guitar loop recalls glossy Trackmasters 90s productions like Nature and Noreaga’s “I’m Leaving” and Nas’s “The Message”. Cam isn’t considered a relic of that era despite having been one of Harlem’s most recognisable non-Mase representatives – instead, he’s considered by many a relic of his absurdist mid-noughties prime when he and the Diplomats practically recreated NY hip-hop in their image. So “You Know That”, like every Dipset-related release, carries that baggage. And yes, Cam isn’t the arrogant somnambulist that once got computers ‘putin, but he’s acquired more audible character than before, pushing his voice in funny new directions. You can even hear him rap through a smile at one point, something that was once inconceivable. Also, he still gets more out of simple words than many of his peers: listen to what he does to “showboat”, “oxtails” and “chauffer”.
[7]

Alfred Soto: or “50 Ways to Ball A Lover.” Clever to foil Cam’s smut-rap with Spanish gee-tar, even when the music drops so he can go rimshot with “Not Jamaican but I gave her my jerk sauce.”
[5]

Ian Mathers: There’s almost always something intrinsically compelling about Cam’s delivery, and there are always memorable lines (jerk sauce, hope floats, Detox — I didn’t say they were always good), but it’s hard to get away from the feeling that he’s an even bigger creep than he prides himself on being. The production’s nice, but it’s so languid I’m not sure menacing lethargy (admittedly, his usual mode) is the best fit. That total nonstarter of a chorus isn’t helping either.
[5]

Ramzi Awn: The guitar riff has a way of bringing me back to the island life I never had. Throw in Cam’Ron and a few mai tais and I’m good.
[7]

Brad Shoup: That Spanish guitar sounds like early Swizz Beatz in 2D: nagging as hell, but at least it’s got some decay. Mr. Cam’ron has a decent return rate on the big jokes, but mostly he’s just bopping from rep maintenance to deft rhymes to sly puns. Probably too draggy for the club, but our local station could use some NY hip-hop.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: I do have time for Cam’ron explicating his sexual escapades in endless detail, but not when he’s neither as inspired as in “Suck It or Not” (in which he made a Proactiv joke as well as a hot sauce one) or as depraved as in “You Know What’s Up” or “Bottom of the Pussy.” The Spanish guitar helps some though.
[5]

Andy Hutchins: Cam’ron has been an object lesson in diminishing returns with every year that passes from his Purple Haze heights, and though he’s still capable with the wordplay, it involves his penis lamentably often, and bars like “When the sun hit the jewels, turn to Avatar” regrettably infrequently. And setting up a quatrain packed with dizzying multis of internal rhyme for a fucking “showboat” pun is just insulting. On the bright side, if Gunplay’s eventually going to name a project Medellin, he should rap on at least a few beats with guitar filtered through something watery like this.
[6]

Nope, not K-Pop or J-Pop, but they sure wish! Or maybe not…

[Video]
[4.77]

Anthony Easton: Writing about formally interesting, abstract works in terms of painting or dance is pretty easy — you can talk about colour or form or movement. I still feel too dumb to talk about abstractness in terms of electronic music, though I have been excited about it for years. I love this. I find it beautiful. I like how it fades out at the end. I like how it turns in on itself. I like how it refuses language, or even the form of songcraft. I like how, in that turning and that refusal, it is close and self-contained but not claustrophobic. I cannot explain what those likes mean musically.
[6]

Kat Stevens: If Joey Santiago had played a bunch of computer games instead of the guitar, then maybe this would be a bit shorter?
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: You’ve got my attention anytime a chiptune song aspires to be more than a lazy grab at 8-bit nostalgia, and Anamanaguchi shoot for a lot more on “Meow.” They give it a good build, which makes the finales that much more adrenaline pumping, less thinking about an old final boss battle and more like actually taking part in one. It’s a shame they went and took the title literally with the inclusion of a sound only a few turns away from Nyan Cat.
[6]

Iain Mew: I’ll admit that I know of Anamanaguchi through their chiptune soundtrack to Scott Pilgrim the video game. It was actually the most enjoyable part of that game, though the achievement wasn’t that difficult in that particular case. “Meow” tries to move away from soundtrack territory by using a squeaky vocal-like sample and by adopting a structure which is pretty much pop-punk, just with the vocals and guitar solos replaced with frenzied electronics. The latter works so well at delivering an energy rush that I wish they’d done away with the annoying squeaks as an unnecessary distinguishing feature.
[7]

Crystal Leww: Am I missing something here? Do I not “get” Anamanaguchi because I didn’t play video games? This pretty much just sounds like annoying pop music made with video game sounds to me.
[3]

Alfred Soto: If Congress investigated the influence of video games on “the culture,” imagine what the world’s greatest legislative body would make of this bleeps and power chord hybrid. In the right hands, though, this hybrid should replace Francis Scott Key’s anthem.
[4]

Rebecca A. Gowns: I don’t know, this is like, weird internet-people music. I don’t fetishize the internet, I don’t fetishize Japan, so I feel sort of fundamentally against this and anything it’s supposed to represent. (Wait… if I close my eyes it sort of sounds like a kid trying to replicate a Dan Deacon song. Better, but still not something I would listen to if I wasn’t humoring the kid.)
[1]

Will Adams: I was wondering when Nyan Cat would get its big break.
[4]

Ian Mathers: The melody is kind of catchy in an overcaffeinated kind of way, but you get the sense that it’s never occurred to them for even a second that the whole “chiptune” thing could be used in any setting or gear aside from this one. Which isn’t automatically a problem but is here, for some reason.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The cover art for “Meow” is a charmingly crude drawing of a Windows computer desktop, with the song title acting as background art and the band’s name stretching out across three separate monitor windows. It is all very Anamanaguchi and, by extension, a very chiptune thing to do: donating an identity to a scarily specific and dated technological era, then reconfiguring your identity through those narrow parameters. On top of the Second Life/avatar lifestyle, “Meow” throws cat samples on top, as though the band aims to combine nostalgia for technology of the past (16-bit riffs!) with our recent internet-influenced tweeness (cat memes). It is dizzyingly gimmicky but also excitingly experimental, as though chiptune is being used as a way for Anamanaguchi to comment on our relations to everyday technology beyond nostalgia and quick-buzz pleasantries. Can we call post-internet a genre yet?
[7]

Brad Shoup: If you pretend it’s a cat singing the verses to the Veronicas’ “Untouched” over an arcade racer, you might find it funny. I mean, not ha-ha funny, more like Rivers Cuomo funny.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: The chiptune palette is a fecund one and “Meow” pings with luminscent brilliance and propulsive drive. In fact, the song is cursed by its greatest strength: it sounds near enough to lo-fi synth-pop that its paucity of ideas is only underwhelming. Anamanaguchi would be interesting were its sound so remarkably experimental that it could survive on novelty alone, but it’s not, so the formlessness seems vacuous. Even a rainbow roadtrip would benefit from verse chorus verse.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Chiptunes, cats, Scott Pilgrim, ’90s remembrance and music beloved of the wrong sort of listeners (as defined by taste policers; here, it’s gaming forumites) all make for quick kneejerk dismissals if you want to do that. If you don’t… well, even then you’re either susceptible to this stuff or you aren’t. And even if you are, your reaction might still be something like “huh, this Pokemon track sure is metal.”
[6]

Her hair looks nice in the video.

[Video][Website]
[5.14]

Brad Shoup: Sounds kind of like the Flack/Hathaway record, but if you swapped Donny out for a roomful of ghosts. That and similar attentions paid to the corners are due to Emeli Sandé, I assume. The transformation in which this song traffics is vague, but calculatingly so, to the point that I assumed the hoary I-made-it key change was inevitable. When she lays into “you look surprised,” that’s the exact moment I steeled myself for it. But no, the strings get Russian Romantic and Keys pulls off this amazing self-actualizing haughtiness. She’s never been great at vocal abandon, but she finds a tempered approach tinged with roughness. For lack of a better word, it’s real.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The lush piano through out this comes straight out of a cocktail bar, but is lusher, richer, and more studio fed–almost too loud for  the vocals, which are less strident than the lyrics suggest that they might be. It is a fantastic little bit of pop pleasure to hear her sing the title as it curves around the instrumentation though. 
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: The ghostly echo trailing some of Keys’ words is a nice touch, and the outburst at the end justifies the slow build preceding it. The bulk of this, though, sounds pretty much the same from her.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Alicia Keys really is mercurial: perpetually peppering a singles discography featuring some of the best songs of the 21st century (“No One,” “Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart”) with some of the most tepid, torpid and insipid (“Like You’ll Never See Me Again,” “Doesn’t Mean Anything”). In following “Girl On Fire” with “Brand New Me” she’s done it again, moving in one stroke from the sublimely ridiculous to the ridiculously sub-limp.
[4]

Edward Okulicz:  The moment when the volume goes up and the song swells showcases a kind of gritty defiance in her voice, but the slappy beats behind it suggest containment, not freedom — it’s a too-short bang surrounded by a heck of a lot of whimper. Liberation and self-discovery aren’t intrisically interesting concepts to wax lyrical about, especially not when the ornamentation is by and large just a few trills and a little breathiness. The opening section which rhymes “Brand new kind of me” with “brand new kind of free” is so banal I don’t know how someone with Keys’ pride can sing it without being embarrassed.
[4]

Will Adams: I find that I either love or hate Alicia in her hoarser upper register. I haven’t decided yet where I fall on “Brand New Me,” but I’m edging towards love, if only because the high notes are buttressed by her warm mid-range. Unfortunately, form doesn’t follow function; a lyric so liberated should not sound so shackled by muted drums and shimmering echoes.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Guess she took her own advice and “grabbed on” to her “ego” (at least we didn’t get a Dusty Springfield cover). Understated by her standards, anchored by a simple piano arpeggio, she comes closer than any performance since 2005 to coming up with, if not a brand new her, then a brand new direction…until the pyrotechnics of the last third. If she genuinely wanted a brand new her, she should hire songwriting without insisting on credit.
[4]

Well, the song’s not a miracle, so we could have guessed.

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Crystal Leww: This sounds like what would happen if someone knew about all the right “parts” of an EDM pop hit and had the assignment of making a song with all those parts. The rap verses are about being a cool macho dude that parties hard and your girl lusts after. The hook actually has no meaning whatsoever; it’s just a bunch of words strung together and sung. The rise and fall of the song sounds contrived. As a result, that bass drop isn’t cathartic, just a cue for the listener to feel like dancing. This song is so lazy that it’s condescending. Did you really think we wouldn’t notice?
[2]

Iain Mew: I love the divebombing synths and stern bass, especially on the full 6 minute version that really gives them space, but the more I listen to Lethal Bizzle’s bit, the more I keep asking questions. Questions like: on your average British night out, is it really the heavy drinker that is most in need of a “no defeat, no surrender” stance? If waking up on a park bench minus your clothes is winning, is it a game worth playing? In January?
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s rather disappointing that there isn’t a word that rhymes with “dench” that means lazy, uninspired or forgettable. This blurb would have been 28 words shorter if there were.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I feel pummeled after listening to this, and the little calm bit in the middle makes it even worse, actively painful to listen to, and not in an interesting way. 
[2]

Rebecca A. Gowns: This song is over before it begins — good length for a ringtone! Incidentally, good song for a ringtone! (If you hear the froggy bass drop, you got a call!) Also a good song for DJs to mix in with other songs at the club! I assume that’s what this song was made for (ringtones, club mixes), so, yknow, it fulfills its purpose.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Oh great, more lyrical valorisation of going out, getting pissed and being obnoxious, set to every pissed, obnoxious record you heard last year and never bothered to learn the name of. Urgently needs a better chorus that does something other than pass the time, or for Wiley to appear in the middle of it when you’re not expecting it. That headache you might get after being out dancing for a few hours can be replicated with one play of “Not A Saint.”
[4]

Brad Shoup: I’ll be squishy for a sec, if that’s cool: in light of the Santa Maria tragedy, Lethal Bizzle’s clubbing-as-contact-sport text — culminating in his boasting “I will not lose” over a skeletal comedown — gives this an eerie vibe. Still, the worst club fires seem to be the province of bands with stage shows, not DJs associated with a ultra-professional brand like Ministry of Sound. As for the sonics: midway through I got a kick out of watching a couple basslines compare serrations. But because Mr. Gonzalez loves chasing interesting textural ideas with arbitrary dropouts and switchups, it’s a moment far too brief. I’d say he’s aiming to keep a dancefloor on edge, but yikes.
[4]

Accept no imitators.

[Video][Website]
[6.78]

Patrick St. Michel: Yesterday was Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s 20th birthday, and that’s the big one in Japan. It’s the age where one is considered an adult… and more importantly, the legal age to get tanked and smoke up. “Furisodeshon” is Kyary’s big coming-of-age bonanza, as the chorus mostly consists of her shouting about her new age and the verses about becoming a grown-up. To match the ecstatic mood, producer Yasutaka Nakata has gone and channeled the music he was making in his early twenties. His earliest material was often giddy, sometimes hyper, and here he’s pulling out tricks he hasn’t used in some time (check that piano lurking underneath all the electronics). It’s a little more reeled in than his younger experiments, but “Furisodeshon” is a nice hat tip to Shibuya-kei while also being a great sound for Kyary to get wild to.
[8]

Will Adams: I’m still miffed we didn’t cover the fantastic “Fashion Monster,” and “Furisodeshon” only makes up for it partially. Nakata’s production is fresh as ever and reaffirms his position in my mind as one of the best soundsmiths in the world. But it’s hard to find a center within all the clamor, and I prefer my chaos a bit more organized.
[6]

Iain Mew: Kyary is such a great pop star that she definitely has the potential for another breakout combination of song and visuals like “Pon Pon Pon,” but it hasn’t happened yet. “Tsukema Tsukeru” and “Candy Candy” were lesser all round; “Fashion Monster” turned out to be great but was too much of a grower and had a boring video. Now “Furisodeshon” has her most enjoyable (and most gif-ready) video yet but lacks the hooks to match. The fairground waltz instrumentals and removal of any sharp edges do make it gently blissful in a happy drunk kind of way, though.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I keep worrying that my reaction to this is a product of some  combination of racism or sexism, so I have had to check my privilege. Yet it keeps coming back to me… this sounds like the soundtrack to a hipster kids show– a Japanese remake of The Powerpuff Girls, for example. It’s the reason why I like it, though. 
[7]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Here’s a rough translation: it’s a birthday song! Kyrary turned 20 yesterday and released this single in anticipation. She’s as much a visual artist as a musical one (remember that she started out as a Harajuku fashion blogger?), so of course you have to watch the video. She plays with J-pop tropes of cuteness and femininity in really exciting ways in all of her music videos — like, she really plays — and this one is no exception. It’s a great tune, and I love this sentiment: “Chocolate’s bitter parts/Are you an adult? Are you a child?/Because I want to have dreams forever.” Another year older, but she’s only just begun. I want to see her keep going!
[9]

Brad Shoup: I rarely translate these fusion-type toplines well. There’s a dread power in something so determinedly placid, so thank God for the synth-pop instrumental figure (I’m pretending it’s being played by a third-wave ska horn section). If you got the spins on your very special twentieth, you’d probably want to latch onto something like this: a raucous reminder that you’re great, you don’t have that much figured out, and if you need to run to the toilet the band’s got you covered.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Of its kind this is the equivalent of Scott Walker’s “The Electrician” — slow enough to savor the filigrees, in this case the lovely piano anchoring the verses. Kyary’s vocal is as blank as Walker’s too, as intentionally affectless as his is steeped in affect.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m not particularly invested in Kyary Pamyu Pamyu as a pop or fashion idol, though it’s impressive how many critics have become so how fast. (Only critics. And fans, naturally. As for civilians, I could’t even begin to tell you their stance.) It’s the sort of thing I try to be less susceptible to, as it’s got a habit of fostering fake narratives and overshadowing the music. Here that wouldn’t need to be the case; this is produced by Yasutaka Nakata, who’s done work for Capsule and Perfume lush enough to stand alone without the rooms full of knickknacks (impressive in their own way, but ultimately extramusical) and magazine meet-cute shoots by Nicola Formichetti. This isn’t so lush, unfortunately. The story: Kyary’s not a girl, not yet a woman. The music: MIDI jazz, cheery interstitial music for a program I’m not watching.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The context tells us she’s an adult now, but the music and the way she sings it says she’s going to be young forever.
[7]

Our job isn’t done until we’ve done some tasteful guitar pop from every country. Today, Thailand!

[Video][Myspace]
[6.14]

Iain Mew: This isn’t the first time and won’t be the last time that an otherwise unremarkable seeming rock song in a language I don’t speak gets through to me by its guitar tone. This one is like when Bloc Party were still using their guitars to evoke the rush of dancefloor epiphanies, except even more heavenly. Lomosonic also pull off a skyscraping double guitar solo that beats the one in “Plans” hands down.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Melodic, emo-inflected rock from Thailand is more or less the same as melodic, emo-inflected rock anywhere else in the world; unlike hip-hop, traditional ballads, or dance-pop, there’s no space for local variations on the formula, so it’s all about the lovelorn melodies and sharp-toothed riffs. Lomosonic do a particularly sweet variation — I like the detail of an acoustic guitar in the mix — but “Felt” trades in the same broad strokes of self-pity and instrumental rush that floppy-haired bands from Caracas to Glasgow are mining with just as little self-awareness or leavening sense of humor.
[5]

Brad Shoup: The implication of waltz time, the guitar ping and vocal sigh of late-period Britpop. And a wonderful twin-guitar flurry arguing for a sophistipop extension.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Before the vocals come in, this is reminiscent of Japanese instrumental-rock band Toe with the smatterings of acoustic and delayed electric guitar –- the second the vocals hit, the band refuse to build on the body and circle the melody about until touching turns to sappy. “Felt” is a piece of pleasant-sounding music, the type of thing that may stops heartbeats in the body of an album but floats on anhedonically as a one-off.
[5]

Sabina Tang: It suits me admirably to spin swooning, pristine soft indie rock — a fully international style for years — in a language (Thai) that I find euphonious but cannot parse; to understand the vocalist’s romantic travails would be to ruin the song, I suspect. On the other hand, the music also never rises above polite balladry (“Wake,” from last year, has dynamics that more efficiently play to the band’s apparent strengths).
[6]

Edward Okulicz: “Felt” is generic, but if, like me, you think that Coldplay peaked with Parachutes, the chiming guitars will seem sweetly comforting. It’s pleasant for what it is, and I enjoy it, but the last couple of seconds, when Peerasit Poltan sings a couple of longer notes, sound like a distinctive voice was lying in wait for four minutes only to come out for an all-too-brief cameo. I won’t dock the rest of the song points because it’s not the swooning, tender stunner that brief snatch could be ludicrously extrapolated to, but I’ll keep an ear out for their next single just in case.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: All the drama here comes out through the music, which allows Lomosonic’s Peerasit Poltan to sell the chorus simply, which makes it come across as more aching than if he belted it. “Felt” mostly sounds content to swirl around, but it’s touching even though I can’t understand a lick of Thai.
[6]

Our weekly dose of CanCon requirements…

[Video][Website]
[2.89]

Alfred Soto: Fifteen years after RZA found a ghetto correlative for the ninja ethos, here’s a fellow reifying it into self-help twaddle for adults who use “impact” as a verb.
[2]

Iain Mew: I’m not saying that a song called “Inner Ninja” is a great idea to begin with, but if you’re going to do one then at least have the decency to put something about ninjas in it, and not just generic motivational tropes over some kind of syruped-up Vampire Weekend imitation. That’s a terrible cop-out.
[2]

Josh Langhoff: The true ninja does not do a lot of things, chief among them make songs telegraphing said ninjaness, so really these guys are harnessing their inner twerps. Someday a real ninja will come and slice all these memes off the web.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: If anything, I will give the professional goofballs behind this song the benefit of the doubt that they believed a clan of ninjitsu would consider this a warm tribute. Who knows, perhaps they just wanted to create the most earnest hip-hop song of all time, to out Macklemore the Macklemores at their most Macklemorian. However, I will not, stand for excuses regarding Classified’s uttering of “bounce” before the first verse, the use of which immediately turns “Inner Ninja” into the least bouncy song of all time. There are national anthems that are more appropriate to bounce to. The theme to Scrubs is more appropriate to bounce to than this. Somewhere, Big Freedia shakes her head in grave solemnity: the bounce has forever been tainted.
[0]

Anthony Easton: I love the sung choruses of this, and the message of freedom through containment has a discipline that works as an appreciated corrective. Extra point for the first sample, and another point for the snaps. Minus a couple of points for its smugness. 
[6]

Sabina Tang: White Ninja: Only Works On Snow. (Related observations — “Princess of China” at least had the merit of being a good song. The children’s chorus, too, has taken a wrong turn on its way to a parallel universe where the words “inner” and “ninja” are never heard in combination, and if a courtesy point will expedite its passage it is welcome to it.) 
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: Enter the Ninja reimagined for a Spongebob Squarepants movie, complete with dippy Jack-Johnson wannabe sidekick.
[1]

Brad Shoup: “Inner Ninja” makes me think of children’s music. It makes me think of Zooglobble‘s Stefan Shepherd, who swooped into Pazz & Jop one year to make an implicit argument that music for our sons and daughters is just as worthy as records from arrested egomaniacs who many never (earmuffs!) get their shit together. “Inner Ninja” isn’t for all ages, but that’s just a matter of tweaking. Thoughtlessly catchy, with a brisk piano progression and judicious kid-choir cameos that belie Classified’s attempts to “go hard”. Kids’ music is (if I remember right) shrewdly generalist, and so it is here. Myles sounds so much like Arthur Russell it’s freaking me out, and you could probably cobble together an ace Arto anthology for little ones. I like this, but an extended hearing in a minivan would drive me fucking nuts. (Earmuffs off!)
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: I prefer my inner pirate.
[3]

Not pictured: the dashed dreams of hip-hop heads…

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[5.45]

Brad Shoup: I get that it’s in our critical charter to flip at any scrap of André and Antwan, and sure enough, their twinned straining against the strictures of the Jeff-Buckley-dines-at-Macaroni Grill production really is the closest thing to a high point.
[4]

Alfred Soto: A shrewd thing for Ocean to ask for help reanimating what was already a sappy plaint, and if it goes pop crossover (yeah right) I’ll call Dre and Boi shrewd too. But a Wikipedia footnote is what I suspect this track will remain.
[4]

Andy Hutchins: This song got the first set of André 3000 and Big Boi verses since 2010 and its most notable moment is the part where Frank Ocean calls a vagina “cotton candy Majin Buu.” And the second half of the song, with the slightly more interesting guitar stabs, a relatively perfunctory Antwan verse (“Smoke through a chim-i-ney” is the best bit), a rare André verse more interesting for its wordplay (“Butter knife, what a life, anyway/I’m building y’all a clock — Stop, what am I, Hemingway?” has an internal rhyme for very little reason followed by a six-syllable end rhyme) than its content (Chris Brown got something similar two years ago, and André’s last line there is telling), an unimaginably bad guitar solo (fun game: try describing it to one of your friends who is unfamiliar with it) is just a good end to a post-coital lullaby masquerading misapplied as the coda to a boring baby-making tune.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: “Whoa, Dragonball Z, sweet!” That was my reaction when I first heard Frank Ocean sing about Majin Buu on the original “Pink Matter,” a moment that made the Toonami-loving teenager inside of me giddy because, hey, DBZ! Thing is, that excitement wasn’t brought about by the actual music but just from a reference I got. The song itself drags a bit, the André 3000 verse good but not great, the highlight being the violins lurking in the back. But, for awhile, an anime reference made me think “Pink Matter” was better than it was because I totally didn’t see that cut-away happening. The remix pulls a similar trick, albeit for a cooler set — Outkast are back together here, remember them? They were great! Yet this doesn’t sound like Outkast at all — and the fact André 3000 didn’t sound thrilled Big Boi even appeared on this drives that home — and the new verse’s focus on doing the “grossest” is out of place here and hurts whatever momentum “Pink Matter” had.
[3]

Crystal Leww: The parts don’t all fit together seamlessly (Big Boi’s verse in particular sticks out in the middle of the song), but every single part sounds really beautiful in its own way. Frank is heartbreakingly beautiful, Big Boi is, as usual, a deft rapper; words just sound right when they’re coming out of his mouth, and André delivers a verse at rapid-fire rate just as gut-wrenching as Frank’s. 
[7]

Iain Mew: It worked as part of developing a mood over the course of channel ORANGE, but doesn’t carry enough weight to strike out alone. Grimes’ “Nightmusic” comes to mind as something we covered with the same problem, although in this case it’s a little more excusable as it isn’t a single but an attention grabbing remix with an Outkast not-quite-reunion as its selling point. Having two fine verses at the end instead of one just makes me more impatient to get past Frank’s part.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The way he sings peaches and mangoes, or the way he sings pleasure, the weird stoner philosophy of aliens and purple skies, the strings straight from “Theme from A Summer Place” that escape into a kind of onomatopoeic graveyard of shouting and moaning — even the tension between Ocean’s falsetto and the rough slow roughness of André or Big Boi is rewarding. But all of the details move into yet another discussion of female sexuality — where they are thick girls or hos or disembodied metaphors. The music of this, the funk lick guitars lapping those sumptuous strings, the electronic and percussion — all of it has potential, and the lyrics just become more heteronormative play-acting, better written and better performed than most, and more innovative, but what begins strong ends disappointing. 
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The interesting/frustrating thing about the album version of “Pink Matter” is how it morphs into an André 3000 cut upon the man’s arrival, indulging all his squawking method-role guitar noodling. For the remix, Frank steps to the side and creates a makeshift Outkast “reunion,” another courteous move that he doesn’t really need to pull. (It is a status symbol, of course — this is Outkast, Official ATLiens, Diamond Status Grammy Winners, Best Duo To Maybe Still Be Alive, Maybe, Maybe?!) The seductive trippiness of the song feels fuller with Big Boi’s new verse, offering three different takes on the allure of “pink matter.” Dre’s sidewinded by romance; Big’s thinking about how to showcase his bravado; as before, Frank’s marvellously overthinking his way into world-spanning tangents, challenging you to try and crack the code. It’s all very, very alluring.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: The sprawling levels on Ocean’s vocals make it hard to control the volume, but it’s worth it.  The “Pink Matter” remix is a functional exercise in moody minimalism.  By the second listen and the “good at being bad, bad at being good” coos at the end, it’s clear that the old-school blend is working.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The ponderously druggy mood works elsewhere on channel ORANGE, where Ocean’s engaged in topics other than his immediate lay; here, though, it’s more a cautionary tale about screwing under the influence of weed or philosophy: you can’t get sexuality through all this bullshit. (A criticism Big Boi will no doubt appreciate.)
[1]

Sabina Tang: In the original construction of “Pink Matter” (the most visceral and haunting song on an album that is not replete with gut-clenching moments), Frank Ocean builds a head of tense sadness with strings — swells and dips and sustained tremolos that nearly unravel into dissonance — in a way that reminds me, of all things, of Patrick Wolf’s widescreen emotionalism. The resolving funk guitar lick, when it arrives, is a slow-burning paroxysm worthy of Prince, and all André has to do thereafter is carry the ball home: wax sincerely regretful about cuddling and how she deserved a better man. Big Boi’s loverman murmur is charming in isolation, but in context he aims too light. The additional verse only serves to diffuse Ocean’s melancholic intensity before André gets his turn. On the other hand, it feels churlish to dock points, given that the track disintegrates anyway with the untuned ending chant; and I can’t tell what the purported remix has otherwise changed. 
[8]

“One day, all these scores will be yours.”

[Video][Website]
[6.12]

Jer Fairall: Far more traditional than the millennial pop crossover that is an increasingly smaller percentage of the reason that Marc Anthony is known outside Latin music circles, this is pleasantly florid in such a way that constantly borders between pretty and saccharine before finally settling somewhere in the neighbourhood of unassuming. 
[5]

Josh Langhoff: Tito’s happy because his new lady doesn’t, to his knowledge, lie, and his happiness bubbles up in the crisp beat and the matter-of-fact busyness of the strings. Next to him, Marc Anthony as The Overwrought Buddy sounds like he’s playing for laughs. Put it all together and you’ve got good humor that still recognizes sadness, maybe even with some affection.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Marc Anthony sings like he’s spreading cream cheese on a bagel: messily and covering  all corners, but this setting suits him more than hyperemotive pop. 
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The song has a lush sadness about it, understandable when it speaks of a former lover who lied and manipulated, but this makes it hard to square how Tito doesn’t perk up when he sings of his new flame, or why Anthony sings as if he’s breathing in laughing gas. Still, the horns give this a sumptuous sound that’s worth a few points.
[6]

Iain Mew: The sunburst entry of the horns and strings is the highlight, and their sparing use works well throughout to provide some finesse that’s missing from the vocals. Less being able to follow the words, there still isn’t anything about the song that sticks with me when it’s over.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Juicy, sophisticated horns, used as punctuation to that terribly clever percussion. I ignored Marc Anthony throughout his marriage to J. Lo, but if he keeps making choices like this, it’s mea culpas all the way down. 
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Tito’s off-the-hook swearing on the final chorus feels like a calculated attempt to differentiate himself from the ultra-professional Marc Anthony, who’s at home on this type of gloopy salsa. However, the song is less about competition than it is about two men sharing their sadsack romance troubles with one another. You can almost see Marc Anthony nodding, cigar in hand, as Tito reflects with glassy eyes. I was more touched by this than I wanted to be but, if you’d pardon my impartiality, this is exactly the type of song I grew up with in my household. This strain of Latin pop and mainstream salsa is irrevocably linked with Christmases and birthdays and home – even when it’s merely okay like “¿Porque Les Mientes?,” there’s a nostalgic comfort in knowing these songs exist, that the singers singing these songs will always be haunted by past loves, and that Marc Anthony isn’t just Dakota Fanning’s dad from that one movie.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Bullshit rarely smells this sweet.
[7]