I think he’s talking to you…

[Video][Website]
[4.88]

Edward Okulicz: Nice guitars and the melody is almost sing-song lovely, but something about the combination of the song and its delivery makes the courtly seem creepy.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Kelly, for all her over-tenseness, sounded like her song had a distinct person in mind. The girl behind Kip’s soporific little love song? Well, she’s pretty. Later she could be married and beautiful. Later still she could pop out a baby. That’s all the detail Kip gives, because that’s all the detail Kip has: it’s there at the start, he hasn’t even met this woman. This isn’t falling in love. This isn’t even falling in love with love. This is draping the words of love around your boner. At least Ken Hoinsky was honest about being dishonest.
[4]

Tara Hillegeist: A word of advice from me to you: Never date a man who likes this song. His momma’s gonna fix you recipes she stole from Paula Deen.
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: This should be an easy target, as Kip Moore’s built a song out of dusty cliches, some of which sound especially jarring in 2013 (“hey pretty girl, let’s build some dreams/and a house on a piece of land/we’ll plant some roots and some apple trees” — sounds nice!). Yet then a line like “time moves faster than you think” sneaks up on you and makes everything on “Hey Pretty Girl” sound a little sadder, especially when delivered in Kip Moore’s drowsy voice. It makes our narrator seem a little more desperate — not in an oft-putting way, but in the way we all get when we realize none of this lasts and we take inventory of what we still want.
[6]

Brad Shoup: It may be another summer of Springsteen. I caught a glimpse of some rapturous writeup of Bruce’s Euro tour in the last Rolling Stone. There evidently exists something called Song of the Summer, and “Dancing in the Dark” may have won that thing. And here comes Kip Moore with his raspy yet delicate tribute to “I’m on Fire.” If we don’t turn the dial on this one for a couple months, can we get an Alexander O’Neal October?
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Moore’s self-insert Springsteen fanfic is fine enough, though nothing it does well can’t be found in “I’m On Fire.” “Hey Pretty Girl” has that song’s soft smolder but replaces the eerie undercurrents with warm complacency. Where Eric Church’s Boss tribute used memory and cultural resonance in service of bruised storytelling and Gaslight Anthem and the Hold Steady play out old moves in new scenes, “Hey Pretty Girl” is about a guy whose dreams aren’t even as detailed as the ones he hears on oldies radio. “Hey pretty girl, it feels so right,” Moore sings — so right that there’s no threat anything might ever go wrong. The lyric imagines a decades-long relationship as a montage from introduction to death with the only included scenes being the sorts for which a congratulatory greeting card would be appropriate. As an ardent Taylor Swift fan I have no problem with a narrator allowing fantasy to careen off into heteronormative excess, but doing so relies on an imagination strong enough to populate social convention with authentic humanity. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: The guitars shimmer like pretty girls while gravely-voiced Moore promises to plant apple trees and build dreams. Sincerity’s all he’s got. We weren’t supposed to believe the Bud-sozzled seducer of “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck,” eh?
[5]

Anthony Easton: This is exactly what is right, and exactly what is wrong, about country right now, especially country written by men. What is wrong: It is terribly sentimental. It meanders. There are laughable cliches (love in the air, life’s a long and winding road.) By calling the woman in question “pretty girl” she becomes an icon of femininity, once again not an agent with her own autonomy, with all the heteronormative stuff. The mother becomes the daughter. What is right: Moore’s smooth baritone works better for domesticity then it does for work like “Beer Money.” I love how he sings “mama.” He becomes a master of concise detail (“we’ll plant some roots and some apple trees.”). It has an earnest sheen, and he seems genuine — and in the words of George Kaufman–when you learn how to fake that, you can fake anything. The end of it, as he dies, is one of the most affecting details in country; the modesty of being thankful for the gift is something that seems both obligatory and unique to the genre. By the math, and by working on being slight and slowly objective, it’s a solid 5, but I like it more than that — and it gives me hope, which must mean something more than that. 
[8]

…I feel like a woman.

[Video][Website]
[6.14]

Brad Shoup: “And if I’m dipshit drunk on the pink perfume/Then I am the man in the fucking moon.” Case’s narrator is a big ol’ sack, to be sure, but he sure makes with the pretty words. Contrast that scent-memory to Jeremih’s in “5 Senses”: “Girl, you smell so gentle and pure/You control my senses.” There’s no control ceded here, just the language of investment and institutional procedure. Case’s man doesn’t have merits, he has a résumé. The whole thing’s like an incisive short story, one heavy on conversational subtext and light on scene-setting. (The twiddly guitar solo is quite a letdown.)
[7]

Anthony Easton: I love Neko Case. Her voice is amazing — a Pacific Northwest PJ Harvey, with all of the power that implies. She’s capable of keening and whispering with equal power. Her lyrics, smart and feminist, have a narrative skill and a political density that suggests profound thought and pure feeling. The gender queering of this is clever and well constructed. The guitars could come from Sleater-Kinney without much effort. The middle bit has some garage band, mid ’60s charm — a charm that might not be that butch, which complicates the gender bit. I need to write these things, because I know it’s good but I don’t love it and I am not sure what is lacking. 
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Each new Neko Case album needs its punchy, narratively-condensed entry point, and “Man” performs the duty with much the same aplomb as “Hold On, Hold On” or “People Gotta Lot Of Nerve.” The rumbling bass and beat are better than the guitars, but how much you like this is going to depend on how powerful or clever you think a line like “You didn’t know what a man was until I showed you” coming out of a woman. I like it, but it wouldn’t work so well without the charging rhythm behind it which turns it into something approaching a battle cry.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Speaking as a man, Neko’s aggression and forthrightness here intimidate me in exactly the way I’m assuming they were supposed to, gnashing and snarling over an atypically muscular guitar accompaniment from professional wuss M. Ward. Speaking as a fan, though, I miss Neko’s usual nuance, if not in her (typically impeccable) vocal, than in the depth that her presence usually guarantees; “Man” has has a provocatively gender-flipped perspective and one helluva punchline in the final verse, but the overall feeling is still one of little more than a lark.
[6]

Daisy Le Merrer: Rock ‘n’ roll has always been a way to affirm masculinity. Bo Didley’s “I’m a Man” was covered by a thousand ’60s British boys who fetishized African American masculinity and felt the era was too emasculating for their taste (you know, that feminist utopia depicted on Mad Men). Among them were The Who, whose early cover meaning was complicated by being featured among many other songs of homo-erotic machismo and troubled gender politics, culminating in “I’m a Boy,” maybe the ultimate case of “protesting too much.” “Man” could be the great lost misogynistic Who song, a track as definitive as a thousand Caruso-deal-with-it.gifs, but it’s 2013 and now we’re all talking about gender, baby. Neko Case can leave the boys behind where the kids are alright.
[8]

Alfred Soto: She’s so there as a singer that like Alison Moyet she can almost overcome generic riffing and compressed drums. Her gender inversions, however, aren’t as interesting as the Raincoats because she’s so there. Turns out she can’t overcome the generic riffing and compressed drums either. More alarming: she’s been getting ideas about keyboard coloring from Elvis Costello.
[5]

Rebecca A. Gowns: I appreciate the rollicking tempo and the little blats of guitar punctuating every “I’m a man!” It’s got all the ingredients for a great song, but something’s missing all the same. I keep listening to the lyrics and trying to scry what exactly Neko Case is saying about the narrator of this song, or even gender relations in general. “I’m a man, that’s what you raised me to be” is conflated with “it’s what kind of animal I am.” Is she being satirical? I honestly can’t tell. The “bullies in the teeth” line and the one about a woman’s love being the watermark seem to be positive attributes, and “I am the man on the fucking moon” sounds hyperbolic, in a bad way. Maybe there’s nothing there after all.
[5]

Maybe we’ll try the “forever hold our peace” option some other day…

[Video]
[5.50]

Crystal Leww: Kelly Clarkson is doing country-inspired pop music? The knee-jerk reaction is to thank Taylor Swift, but there’s a better case for the continued dominance of Miranda Lambert in country and the popularity of the television show Nashville. Unfortunately for Kelly, she always sounded better angsty and so did country music. There is just an unfortunate discord between her urgent belting, which worked so well on “Since U Been Gone,” and the message to… settle down? Her tone doesn’t sound content and happy; it sounds frazzled and tense. Finally, I’m not sure that wedding bells have ever worked well in music…
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Kelly Clarkson’s acquitted herself well with country music thus far, even if it’s further and further from her strengths, but country sung shouty and strained isn’t the best look. It wouldn’t even be the best performance on Country Week.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Clarkson embodies the sweet spot where AAA and country work towards a middle of angst. The first verse is a platonic ideal of country misery, but the bridge and chorus are almost entirely adult alt. The difference — in speed, in intensity — is a good measure of where one begins and one ends. Clipped vowels move on to places where she almost yells over the production — how she sings “bottle” is one end of the spectrum, how she signs “you” is the other — and in one track she demolishes what pundits have to say about both genres being basically the same. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: Giddy and persuasive without coming off cartoony, she’s so swept I’m about to send in my damn RSVP.
[9]

Al Shipley: I have a really pathetic level of investment in Kelly Clarkson’s life and career, and just want her to be happy and privately celebrated when I heard she was engaged. Plus I’ve always wanted her to lean more country, so obviously I was predisposed to enjoy this perhaps more than it deserves. But it’s still got some nice little twists in the vocal melody and is far less saccharine than I expected. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: The saccharine rush of the banjo, bells, and electroglaze on the guitars edges so close to Shania Twain territory that I wondered why the title was missing an exclamation point, which is the problem. With “Don’t Rush” among the best singles of her career — an update of seventies AOR-country tropes — I was set for more goodies.
[6]

We wouldn’t go quite that far.. maybe “no perfecto”.

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Anthony Easton: The unrelenting ego of this leads to Kanye levels of self-sanctification, and it does not have the same wit to justify it. But it has an inflated production, a global, all-absorbing push… it refuses to justify itself; all of those choirs and all that spitting venom combine to make some serious fronting. It doesn’t need the wit. 
[8]

Iain Mew: “No Bueno” is maximalist in comparison to “New York,” and slower and easier to digest than “Werkin’ Girls,” but it’s still not a pop move. It’s way too harsh for that, even when Angel Haze eventually takes a break for air, or when she’s singing, since that’s just about as fearsome sounding as her rapping. The song is impressively full-on, but it feels more like a second album “here I am, I can still do this” statement than the startling introduction of either of the previous singles.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Not up to “Werkin’ Girls” or the four or five other astonishing tracks on Reservation, but as a crossover move it recontextualizes her bravado and her Pro Tools. YOU OWE ME deserves T-shirt immortality.  
[7]

Crystal Leww: This is an uninspired diss track aimed at nameless and generic “bitches” set over a fairly generic and trendy beat. I like Angel Haze a lot; she shows off her technical prowess at rapping (and brags about it because obviously) as well as a serviceable hook singer, but this lacks the urgency, creativity, and tension of her best work. “The situation is below me,” indeed.
[4]

Brad Shoup: A gospel of devastation, overlaying some Movie Soundtrack Masters genero-dread. The devastation is more insisted upon than described… I mean, “No Bueno”? That’s like Cattle Decapitation naming a track “Cookout Dust-Up.” The jokes aren’t here, and neither is any kind of evil glee. The definition of a rote tideover.
[3]

Will Adams: The designation of making someone suicidal as a triumph in the first verse made me a bit queasy. At least the pain’s alleviated by Angel Haze’s unconvincing performance: the decent beat does most of the work while Angel fires blank after blank.
[5]

DISCO STRINGS!

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Katherine St Asaph: If you told me this was Mya, trying to crack the K-pop market after her last two albums only sold in Japan, I wouldn’t question you. If only because this sounds so much like a Fear of Flying offcut. A great one.
[8]

Will Adams: Could someone give me an example of a moment when disco strings don’t work? I’m beginning to think it’s an absolute. On “Give it to Me,” they ramp up the theatrics to Broadway levels, but there’s still the problem of that bare chorus.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Rather good trio-pop, with the rhythm guitars and strings complementing the breathy vocals.
[6]

Iain Mew: There’s a bit in the video that’s quite emblematic. Bora raps about writing a letter hundreds of times and tearing it up again and again, and then after miming that she throws a handful of glitter. “Give it to Me,” with the group’s performances of controlled desperation and its funk and delightfully swishy strings, is the sound of taking heartbreak and turning it into sparkle.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Dear modern K-Pop: Hope this finds you well. Don’t get too worried…I’m not writing this to announce my intentions to stop listening to you. Nope, you are still putting out some of the best pop on the planet right now…you should YouTube “Thrift Shop” and have a good chuckle knowing that topped the American charts this year. But just wanted to let you know sometimes it’s OK to not go overboard with the maximalism. Yeah yeah, I can hear you now…”but what about ‘Bubble Pop!,’ what about ‘Go Away?’” Those are great, but just listen to the new Sistar single. It’s so smooth and that chorus is simple but effective, drawing so much out of just some single syllables. But overall it has way too much going on…the strings are a touch over the top, and…here’s your big problem…why tack on a rap section, especially one as cobbled-together as this? Love you still, but sometimes less is more.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Is this a “Daydreamer Dream” sighting? Fuckin’ eerie. Still, I can’t go for that blowsy penthouse disco unless the voice is utterly commanding.
[5]

Daisy Le Merrer: Hyorin is still one of the best singers in K-pop, and she gives a wonderful breathy performance on this, but Sistar’s songs almost never rise above the serviceable, and this one’s no exception. Bonus point for the disco strings, though.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Who knew that breathless falsetto and finger snaps would go so well with sex moanings and general exhortations? It’s like the banana split of erotic signs and signals, but less interesting. 
[5]

I was this close to Photoshopping the picture and tagging it “Handlebar (Moustache)”

[Video][Website]
[6.71]

Anthony Easton: I know this is supposed to be space disco, but it’s not weird or expansive enough to be. I’m not even sure it has the right beat structure to be disco. It’s not pleasurable. A formal exercise, a desire to repeat without expanding or extending, and it really fails to ramp up significantly. In fact, it might be exactly like being stranded on a bad night in a bad bar. 
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Step 1: Buy giant novelty drink from Las Vegas Strip. Step 2: Pour out original contents. Step 3: Fill with special cocktail that’s 20 percent whiskey, 20 percent lemonade, 10 percent vodka and 50 percent distilled rainbow. Step 4: Find a nice pool or beach, preferably one also near a dance floor or roller rink. Step 5: Drink. Step 6: Enjoy your vastly improved summer.
[8]

Pete Baran: Others in the office suggest it is classic hold music, I give Todd a little more credit than that but never do eight bars when sixty four will do seems to be the ethos. But sunny day breakbeat disco (more on the disco than the breakbeat) it seems to fill a very satisfying hole. Pity there are no sunny days in the UK for it to go with. Strandbar (Samba) is a little better, but Daft Punk didn’t just go and make a samba record.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Terje had me with the wobbly sequencer lines, but like his best tracks he doesn’t hoard the best elements; they’re a preparation for a house breakdown so simple that it doesn’t occur to anyone but he to try it more often.
[7]

Brad Shoup: It’s a monorail — no, it’s a party monorail! The funk is modest (the bassline weakly inverts, then strikes a repetitive figure) but you’ve got to keep your seatbelt on most of the time, right? If you look to your left, you can read some billboards about samba. During the layover, please feel free to imitate Thelonious Monk attempting house.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: All you need to know is that the pianos come in after four minutes, they’re great, and the rest of the track’s fine. It builds well, and the bass is fine for people on their fifth drink or their second hip.
[7]

Will Adams: The bass licks groove, the piano stabs pop, the synths spiral, and the beat bumps. There’s little else to ask for, except perhaps something as great as the hook that “Inspector Norse” had. I’m sure if I were hearing this on a dancefloor instead of during my lunch break, I wouldn’t mind.
[7]

As you can see, today’s themes is abbreviations.

[Video][Website]
[5.17]

Anthony Easton: Anglo-Jamaican toasting, done with an elegant respect for form, and — no matter how much the introduction says it — with very little distortion. 
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Neither memorable reggae or brostep, this is the equivalent of getting to your dorm room the first week of college and realizing you need to decorate. So you rush out to the poster sale and buy some generic prints – John Belushi swiggin’ Whiskey, something about Pink Floyd – and hang them up. They do their job (cover the wall) but add absolutely nothing of interest.
[2]

Brad Shoup: Athletes repping musicians is even worse than musicians repping musicians, although Ali knocking the Beatles out was cool, I guess. The speaker ain’t burning per se, but the grim chorus is crazy infectious, and I’m fine with the infiltration of UK buzzsynth. An effective banger, in other words: not going to set the show on fire, but it’ll get a lot of people to loping.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: “Soundbwoy” doesn’t seem to aspire to any more than being a “hello, here I am” single for Stylo G, and it nearly does that very well. All guns are blazing (though if possible, the drops could have done with being more over the top), but it also lacks any real sense of identity. There might not be much in the charts like it, but it could easily be Chase & Status featuring A Man You’ve Never Heard Of. He’s perhaps somewhat stifled by his record label’s seeming insistence that radio edits must not exceed much more than two and a half minutes, but in any case he’s left with a grand entrance that could easily be an exit too.
[6]

Crystal Leww: Oftentimes, artists adding in elements of dubstep, grime, and garage into their genres just sound like a confusing and disorganized amalgamation of trend chasing noise. “Soundbwoy” is surprisingly successful at combining reggae, dancehall, and dance music because it stays reserved rather than focusing on moments of gratification. That’s not to say that “Soundbwoy” isn’t gratifying. The drops revert to familiar bars, but that’s welcome rather than boring. Stylo G’s just managed to create a track that sounds like dancehall but even the most uneducated club go-er can get down to.
[6]

Iain Mew: Remember that unusually dubby Knife Party single we covered? This is kind of the reverse – putting the step into dub! Despite also having a chorus on a fire theme, however, it’s lacking in much fire from either side.
[5]

CANSEI DE SER SAVVY!!!

[Video][Website]
[5.75]

Anthony Easton: The squelchy beats, the solid beat, and how the vocals work a kind of bored desire all seem rave by numbers, and the lyrics are terrible , but a hint of horn, and the perfect detail in the line “I don’t want to be your sour cherry” make the feel-good vibes feel less terrible. 
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Starts off as an out-of-step stumbler, a couple good ideas failing to click together. Then those horn stabs enter the picture and everything starts to make a little more sense. Yet that’s really the only neat sound here, CSS shaking off the ugly start and making something tolerable, but not much more.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Like IconoPop and Santigold, CSS take advantage of the commercial possibilities of what I’ll call discreet exotica: the sounds of many lands mediated by electronics. But the performers should hone these influences. CSS have a lyrical tag and a blank at the center.
[5]

Brad Shoup: So Adriano Cintra quit and took a bunch of instruments with him. Since no one ever picked up a CSS record for the guitar tone, this hasn’t seemed to appreciably affect the survivors. Not so much sun-splashed as backseat-melted, “Hangover” practically gives off fumes. The brass celebrates, Wayne Coyne-style effects bubble and pop, and Lovefoxxx remains an anti-singer in the Bow Wow Wow/Girls At Our Best! tradition. Allegedly a joke band, they seem to’ve shed their cornier trappings, “sour cherry” line aside.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: The way this gently buzzes brings to mind a livelier “Sleng Teng,” and one that’s joyously twisted: the sound of losing the plot and dancing onwards. They don’t love you any more? Sing some lines about going through the gates of Hell with them, they’ll soon change their mind! Just as long as you keep to the conditions of your restraining order, it’s fine.
[7]

Will Adams: Just like a real hangover: mushy and haphazard, annoyingly persistent, and lasting longer than necessary.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: “Hangover” contains both the indolence that leads to, and results from, a good hangover. It’s loose and slack and charming. I like how the boozy electro-pop that they made their name in has gained a slight tropical feel to it; it has the smell of cocktails all over it.
[7]

Daisy Le Merrer: CSS feels like a band who really should have broken up by now. I mean, back in 2006 when we were all fawning over “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above,” I would never have bet on them lasting this long. I mean, a singer going by the name ‘Lovefoxxx’ seems destined for a solo career, right? Yet here we are, ten years after CSS formed, and they’re now making really sweet love songs, incorporating Brazilian elements in their music. They may still be the most inconsistent of bands, but their sloppy songwriting tendencies now read less as the result of too much hard partying and more as the relaxed atmosphere of old friends fooling around. I can’t say I’m unhappy with how things turned out.
[7]

You certainly can’t get her for false advertising with this one.

[Video][Website]
[6.33]

Alfred Soto: We’ve heard a lot more K-Pop since 2010, and M.I.A.’s latest can’t help but sound leaden in the funny noise and programmed beats department. The last forty-five seconds – Maya going spacey over tabla and lots of space – suggest another direction.
[6]

Iain Mew: Tonnes of the fun stuff, tonnes and tonnes of it! All rattling about in a big box and slamming into walls, but coming out with a peculiar sense of order.
[7]

Daisy Le Merrer: M.I.A. is usually the perfect illustration of why political pop music works best as a series of signifiers rather than as a coherent discourse. So basically this song is freedom, truth and the Public Enemy way and I can’t argue with it. You can’t argue with the sound, too, which is basically what you’d expect from her at this point. Though “can’t argue” was probably not M.I.A.’s aim, this works well enough.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Oh god, this is just an aural nightmare. So much stuff that doesn’t go together forced together in what M.I.A. probably thinks is a zany bit of creative collage but actually sounds like the composition was finalised by picking a bunch of sounds and samples, writing their names on the backs of coloured pieces of paper, then getting a bunch of children to paste those papers coloured-side up on a wall, then turning them over and duplicating that pattern in Garageband or something. It might have worked if the rapping on top was good, but this isn’t so much sub-Minaj or sub-Missy, more sub-Daphne and sub-Celeste. At her best, M.I.A. can use her voice to accentuate her magpie productions’ rhythmic hooks, here she’s just barking unintelligently: “I’m so tangy people call me Mathangi” doesn’t even count as wordplay. She’s so lazy a lyricist that she throws out little ideas and expects you to link them up into something coherently political. That awful creaking noise that sounds like you’re standing on a bridge that’s breaking apart makes my skin just crawl. This actually causes my ears and brain to hurt like nothing in recent memory.
[0]

Crystal Leww: It’s a shame that M.I.A. so frequently gets left out of larger discussion of rap music and almost never gets listed in the category of “examples of conscious rap” along side Talib, Common, and Lupe. Her music says some shit, but much more importantly, it’s never boring sonically, always so god damn experimental and interesting to listen to. “Bring the Noize” actually says some stuff about the banks and freedom but sounds as arrested and compelling as the stuff that Kanye’s doing right now. M.I.A. has always been a true punk for life, has never gotten old or boring or preachy. So why aren’t we always talking about M.I.A.? 
[8]

Brad Shoup: Bringing it from the cargo hold of a jumbo jet, seems like. Or perhaps a Scooby-Doo mansion: doors open and shut, echoes appear and vanish, M.I.A. stalks her prey one room at a time. (The creaking door is my favorite touch; Sun Ra approves.) Lots of stuttering, naturalistic and otherwise. Could be space-filling, could just be another way of wearing you down. But I did not anticipate the freakstyle, fully-pressurized ending. Yet another track where I just need a bit to swoon over and a lot to admire.
[8]

Andy Hutchins: Chic’s “Le Freak” has that “Freak out!” refrain that was originally “Fuck off!”; the words that pierce the whirlwind on “Bring the Noize” include a “freak dem” refrain (really “Freak-freak d-d-d-freak dem,” or something like it) that sounds like a stand-in for “Fuck them.” And what is calling a song “Bring the Noize” that is frustratingly low-key until you crank the volume but a fuck you, really? Maya — Mathangi — still ratatats well, and by the time what she’s actually saying is fully understood, the revolution will have happened. Mission accomplished.
[9]

Will Adams: Strike the eerie comedown at the end and you’ve got a veritable banger. It’s quintessential M.I.A., with a beat that stretches and snaps like a rubber band and vague agitprop – that stutter hook translates to “free dem.” She tends to get lost in the shuffle, but this better be enough to prove that Matangi deserves to see the light of day.
[7]

Anthony Easton: For an artist that sounded on the bleeding edge of vapid politics and brilliant visual sense 5 years ago, now she sounds tired — it may be the kid, it may be bagging the Bronfman, but this sounds ancient and not very justified. It’s not even ugly enough to be interesting. That said, her flow spits, and her voice (actual, formal, what it sounds like) are interesting enough to think about implications. 
[5]

We believe you Webbie, you don’t have to convince us.

[Video][Website]
[4.43]

Jonathan Bradley: Deep South mainstay Trill Entertainment has seen better days. After the label made itself ground zero of one of the most vibrant rap scenes in the country in the mid to late ’00s, up-and-comer Lil Phat was murdered; Mouse on tha Track, the producer that gave Trill its hyperactive, elastic sound, went his own way; and Boosie, the closest thing rap has to a modern day Pac, spent years in jail, where he remains while the State of Louisiana tries to make a murder charge stick to him. Webbie was responsible for the label’s biggest hit, 2007’s sort-of feminist and entirely infectious club hit “I.N.D.E.P.E.N.D.E.N.T.,” and though more workmanlike than Boosie, he occasionally managed to outrap his more charismatic counterpart (on “Better Believe It,” for instance). “What I Do,” though, could handle an assist from one of Trill’s now unavailable livewires. Chicagoan producer TraBeats sends an appropriately rickety beat down South — nervy stabs and bottom heavy bass — and Webbie’s still got heart, but it’s not transfixing the way the best Baton Rouge rap is. 
[6]

Edward Okulicz: A boast needs to sound big to fit a swollen ego, not sound like it’s come out of someone who’s been shrunk. This whole thing’s too damp for the dancefloor and too mild to do much else. The spare twitch of the production would be effective on something with more personality or intensity — you can hear momentum at the end of the first verse but the rest doesn’t unsettle or move. The monotony is broken by the hook, but it’s not a relief — it’s a stinker.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Brain-dead hook chanted with conviction by one of Trill’s house acts, who scored with “Independent” in 2008. We need a moratorium on the mixing board trick of slowing the vocals.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Webbie goes above and beyond against hand-me-down Diplo pings and an awful chorus chirped by a pipsqueak extraterrestrial. The track thumps and sparks like a peak-hour body shop, but dude has got to spring for top-notch labor.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The production knocks portentously like a cheap knockoff of Lex Luger several years out of date; Webbie intones drearily over top of it as though he’s as in need of convincing as anyone else.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Even the hook sounds unimpressed with itself – “this is really me/this really what I do,” delivered with concealed disappointment rather than boisterousness. 
[4]

Anthony Easton: I am not sure that you should be so proud of what you do, if what you do is make generic pussy-baiting hip-hop. 
[3]