Good timing, Eric…

[Video][Website]
[5.29]Patrick St. Michel: This sounds a lot like what Mumford and Sons do, with one critical difference: this sounds fun. Eric Paslay doesn’t care about what clichés he wades into because he’s too busy crafting a shout-along chorus that’s actually a good time, no melodrama included.
[7]

Josh Langhoff: I think Eric Paslay needs to buy some shoes that fit. Of all his co-writes, “Friday Night” is closest to “Barefoot Blue Jean Night”: through force of song he’ll create for you an ideal Night of barefootedness, fast cars, freedom, banjos wiggling like toes on solid arena riffs, and burly choruses of folks too drunk and/or amped up to articulate speech. Man, I love “Barefoot Blue Jean Night,” and this one’s even better. Bonus: it gives me the rare opportunity to write the phrase, “less sludge rock-y than Lady Antebellum’s version.”
[8]

Brad Shoup: Another one of those tunes where the songwriter crams the sausage casing with imagery. By golly, Eric’s just so pumped for the weekend he can’t even use similes! This is going to trip so many people up on karaoke night. Props on transposing the “Smoke on the Water” chords, though. Very sneaky.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Are we now at the third generation of generic rip-offs of this kind of work? The sheer depth of banality that these find, seems worth noting. Nothing else is though.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Dude, your Friday nights sound exhausting.
[4]

Alfred Soto: He wants to be a lot of things and only 24 hours to be them (reminds me of this segment). He wants to set her free and take her high, her money in her pocket, her, uh, lemonade in the shade — the money I get, but I want a stronger drink than lemonade on a Friday night, although shade in Florida is nice. The guitar punctuation helps.
[4]

Iain Mew: I’m writing this on a dull Thursday evening, but the sentiment still isn’t grating. I attribute this partly to its lack of specifics that makes the feeling he’s proposing sound more multi-purpose and inclusive of anyone at any time, and mostly to how high the energy levels are regardless and infectiously excited Paslay manages to stay.
[8]

Would screencapping her from the elbows up meet the definition of “perversity”?…

[Video][Website]
[5.43]

Brad Shoup: Oh, you do? That’s neat. You should write a song about it!
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: Songs about butts are often one note, but at least John Hart had really smooth sounding music to back up (HA) his words. This sounds boring, which makes the ass-centric lyrics all the more grating.
[1]

Cédric Le Merrer: Listening to this after reading a thousand thinkpieces and listicles on Miley’s VMA twerking, I just wish we’d pick this as the definitive 2013 statement on butt politics instead. Finally, a butt anthem as butt positive as “Bubble Butt” that’s also butt empowering. The “If you’ve got no butt” call at the end is also more butt inclusive than anything in Mackiemore’s “Same Love” (a song strangely silent on the subject of butts). 
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Parts of this skirt close enough to Missy’s “Work It” in terms of flow that Lady Lykez doesn’t even need to try. But the wobbling noise is a beautiful, beautiful addition.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Indebted to Missy Elliott as much as LL Cool J’s forgotten “Big Ole Butt,” this grime-y bumper passes on good intentions: we can never have too many songs about mirror moves.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: It takes a strong beat and a stronger personality to get me over a flute-sample hook. It helps that there are at least a half-dozen more hooks to choose from. If this is one of the important directions grime is going in ten years later, more power to all butts everywhere.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I love the opening creaking door sound; the percussive shotgunning; the gliding production over the rough bumps, her voice — almost ragged; the beat, which has memories of bounce; and all of this in a delightfully self-aware, hyper-English package. This might be genius.
[8]

Oh, it’s instructional…

[Video][Website]
[3.00]

Patrick St. Michel: “Talk Dirty” is the reason I sometimes feel guilty being an American ex-pat.
[0]

David Turner: When songs treat other cultures and countries as sexual buffets for internationally famous super stars, I just don’t know what to say at this point. It’s just as boring and uninteresting as it is offensive. But 2 Chainz?! Why Mr. Chainz are you doing this to yourself?! The 2 Chainz brand deserves better. Does Mr. Commes Des Garcon appreciate this? What about Mr. Alexander Wang? Answer me that Tauheed, and do your shades really cost 8 bands?
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Oh, man. On the one hand this is the best song Jason Derulo’s ever recorded, sexy and goofy and full of interesting, funky sounds. On the other hand, the way it exoticizes its nominal object — girls around the world — is cringeworthy and awful and borderline racist. The production and Derulo’s relaxed delivery (shades of Robin Thicke, and I doubt it’s an accident) are an [8], the lyrics and fake-Arabic riffs are a [1]; split the difference and add [1] for 2 Chainz, and you get:
[5]

Alfred Soto: Let’s talk about the Balkan Beat Box horn sample. Yes, they provide the sleaze that the chorus can’t evoke on its own, but the leering insistence of Derulo’s vocal and 2 Chainz’s flat-out stupid rhymes about pussy and photos is like a “Three Caballeros” remake done by Jerry Bruckheimer, who presumably would explain the semiotics of international oral sex.
[4]

Iain Mew: That sax skronk don’t need explaining, but Derulo is hopeless at conveying enjoyment and the song’s premise is both offensive and offensively muddled. The international language of booty is one thing, but if you get off on dirty talk, why wouldn’t it be better from someone with a command of your language?
[2]

Brad Shoup: Total clown work. Except for that chorus. Someone take another stab at that chorus.
[2]

Will Adams: This has so much going for it. Jason shows more personality in one minute than he does in his entire discography elsewhere, the horn motive grabs a hold like an anchor, and 2 Chainz adds a bold crassness that balances Jason’s lecherous verses. But under the veneer of finding universal booty and international love lies an unsettling power disparity, succinctly presented in the final seconds, when an anonymous woman with a moderate accent giggles, “What? I don’t understand!” But Jason does, and it makes a world of difference.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Almost without fail, umlaut renouncer Jason Derulo’s singles are both generic and faintly ludicrous — usually by dint of a sample — and so as with his last one (not that ludicrous), this marks a break from the norm — one thing it is not is generic. The sample is in place though, and it is outlandish. That’s the good part. The bad part is pretty much everything else. Everything else, aptly enough, would be best experienced through a heavy linguistic barrier. A wise man once claimed that everybody hates a tourist; someone should have told Jason.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Where Oakland producer Wallpaper attempts to retcon Jason Derulo into a sex symbol, which would be a fine idea if it wasn’t for the fact that we know so little about Derulo beyond his own name — he’s a blank slate, so the shock shouldn’t register. However, it does. With a beat that could be described as “Mr Saxobeat” on half a Molly, the anonymous Mr Anyone recasts himself as Gigolo Polyglot, seducing non-American women over Balkan Beat Box samples. A heavily-accented woman of East Asian descent closes the song, giggling that she doesn’t understand, despite Derulo voraciously attesting that his body is some type of sexual Rosetta Stone. It’s a bad idea for a song — it was plenty stupid when Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards and Young Money did it — but Derulo has little to lose and to his credit, is entirely devoted to making sure you remember “Talk Dirty.” As it stands, it is a highly professional big-budget catastrophe, like an elaborate firework display consisting of three half-sodden sparklers. Also, 2 Chainz says “suck my penis.”
[3]

NIPPLES~!…

[Video][Website]
[6.33]

Brad Shoup: My God — Ray Foxx! It’s been ages. I see he’s still hanging with those trumpets. And that tangoing piano line is great… it’s like watching a meth-addled spider spin a web. Collier veers from dance-comp diva and vamping flapper, but it’s her “b-boom boom boom” bit that’s the best. Is there a Song of the Autumn yet, or does the creep need time to set in?
[8]

Alfred Soto: Doubletracked, Collier’s voice conjures Katy B in boom boom mode over generic Brit-house arrangement.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: One of several logical endpoints to the “We No Speak Americano”/”Mr. Saxobeat” wave of faux-swing cheese-house hits that have swept Europe over the past several years, marrying it to the classy drum ‘n’ bass-derived electronic soul that’s been energizing London’s underground pop scene for the past several years. Cheesier than AlunaGeorge but classier than Alexandra Stan is a pretty broad spectrum, admittedly, but Foxx and Collier sidestep most of the usual pitfalls to either side and find a sweet, fresh-air spot where retro-minded hooks mesh with furiously modern beats.
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The chorus is a hopscotch through one word. It’s plenty cute, but Collier’s producer, Ray Foxx, noticeably struggles to sustain a song around it. He pulls tension out of the first verse’s LOUDquietLOUD dynamics but afterwards finds himself with little direction to lead his track and his collaborator. Without the tension, the bubblegum pop goes limp, needlessly sticky rather than flavourful.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: A delicate bit of storytelling, made by subtle touch and slow pace. Admittedly not all the lyrics are great (poison as a positive is still a bit weird, as is “let me take control of you”), and they’re a bit clumsy in places, but where they’re kept simple they’re the best things in the song. “I can’t speak or think, I want you as mine; you make my heart beat in and out of time” sung at the end, as the realisation really hits and the affectingly onomatopoeic hook reaches its most urgent, is glorious.
[7]

Anthony Easton: For a song about hearts going boom boom, this has the amphetamine speed down but not the percussive spirit. I would appreciate more literalism.
[5]

Never mind the sales figures, we still love her — well, sort of…

[Video][Website]
[6.57]

Jonathan Bogart: There aren’t enough musicians today picking up the cues that Annie Lennox left all over the 80s and 90s. This is a good start.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Shall we just pretend this pulsating near-masterwork, which is both expansive and booty-shaking and kind of tense and scary at the same time, is Lady Gaga’s new single? Yes, let’s.
[9]

Scott Mildenhall: Different bits of this sound like lots of different things: Vitalic, “Play” by Jennifer Lopez, Roisin Murphy’s “Overpowered”, the Knight Rider theme; and with VV doing her best scary new wave voice over the top, it comes to recall Lulu James and Planningtorock to certain degrees. More importantly though, it makes it a very good song.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The blurred desperation of her voice fits this permutating dance track. Diddy, please try to hire Brown for the Last Train to Paris sequel.
[7]

Anthony Easton: At first I was frustrated by the production overwhelming her voice, but the reveals, the masking and unmasking, the way her voice and the production are actually curving around each other — this shifts and changes in ways that suggest a kind of suspicious hospitality.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Like Torrini, a returning VV Brown delivers high drama, her music pointedly darker hued almost so to acknowledge her absence from mainstream music. And like Torrini, this turn finds her music — and voice! — drained of any colour whatsoever. There’s sporadic zest when the production lifts, allowing some space for her voice to rise out of the murkiness. Here, the promise of her abandoned second LP arises, but it’s quickly dashed. “The Apple” strikes for artful melancholy but can’t work past glum tedium.
[4]

Brad Shoup: It’s disappointing to learn that the title is shorthand for “the apple of my eye”. Apples offer so much for songwriters! Plus, there’s all that fiber and niacin and potassium and vitamins. Plus, they’re super fun to throw, and we desperately need more songs about kineticism. (Except for dancing — we’re good.) This showcases a miserably repetitive vocal melody and cadence, nested in today’s icy New New Wave: a total crabapple.
[4]

She won every race. Until he drove her too far…

[Video][Website]
[6.29]

Katherine St Asaph: Emilíana Torrini revisiting Love in the Time of Science (or her Kylie writing days! Anyone remember those?) is close to her one viable career path at this point; but there’s funk and guitar licks to this that let her, reverb cloud and all, put over lines like “I want it dangerous.” I kind of want a mashup of this and “Lose Yourself to Dance.”
[8]

Alfred Soto: The burbling licks and flashing synths immerse the listener, with Torrini the equivalent of one of those warm jacuzzi jets. Relaxing and comfortable for a couple minutes before the skin starts to prune.
[6]

Anthony Easton: In the best places here, she sounds like a 70s-era Laurel Valley hippie. With a voice that clean and precise (a voice that would get lost in traditional folk production) over a languid space vibe (dance music without the need or desire to dance) is kind of a genius move. It becomes more effective if you ignore the lyrics.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: All mood and mumble and “life is a flicker in the universe” sulking, “Speed of Dark” is effective but shallow. It paraphrases other artists and other eras without ever striking upon what may make this a song that defines its artist. Signifying greatness is not the same as embodying it.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Takes weightlessness as a primary good. Normally I wouldn’t cavil — I’ve fallen in love with enough Haim and Solange and even Fucking Drake over the past year — but her voice doesn’t do anything more than the same wounded burr throughout. I need a little more personality with my heartstring-tugging slogans and warmly mannered productions.
[6]

Brad Shoup: She dangles the prefixal melody but has no way to resolve it, resorting instead to repeating fragments. The track lopes along with a chilly bassline, inspiring the pop longing that its master forgot to pack.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: Title and synth bass sound like something out of a seedy 80s movie that takes place in shadow, window blinds casting a luminous pattern of parallel lines across the room, satin sheets and air conditioning rampant. No, not American Gigolo! You shouldn’t actually watch Speed of Dark or know anything about it beyond the video box and the tagline, “She won every race. Until he drove her too far.” To learn the subtleties of the plot or, heaven forbid, witness Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson in his disowned early role as rival racer/sex ringleader Mace Thoroughgood — that’d break the spell.
[7]

Tech-sicity.

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Alfred Soto: Meaningful, and the strain shows, as if the writers called 1-900-PAIN. 
[4]

Josh Langhoff: It’s gratifying to see Strange Music’s material success — placing eight titles on the Rap Albums chart this year, more than any other label, and luring a host of famous people to appear on Tech’s Something Else. The label offers hope for economic recovery; I hope they’re not being jerks about employee health insurance. “Straight Out the Gate” is a model of quality product on a budget. Seven’s beat is sample-free (yes?) and the video’s chief expense seems to have been a really big video screen. Serj does his Serj thing but Tech sells the song with a couple different flows per verse, memorable lines about the grave digger and double jointedness, charming “r” sounds, and obvious pleasure in doing his job well.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Ominous in the worst ways, like a teenage Billy Corgan, from the children talking to the abstracted production of the vocals, but charming in its pretensions.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Tech’s great on this, roaring and raging terrifically and sounding at ease over the crunch of the beats and the brief rip of guitars. Lots of great rhymes and sections that don’t look much on paper but work fantastically too: “now they crawlin’ back ’cause I’m tall as Shaq” and the “anointed/double-jointed” pair in particular. The organ and the kids’ chorus would be a better fit for a campy medieval musical though, which coupled with Tankian’s ultra-earnest delivery on his hook comes across as being funny in a less than flattering way. Those bits are mercifully brief though.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Tech’s daubed pretty much every color on the Dark Palette by now. He’s done the existential horrorcore, the demonology, the serial killer thing — I think he was even in the Four Doinks at one point. As Juggalo-courting camp, it’s pretty good, though the inclusion of Serj Tankian feints towards something outward-looking. He’s sounding particularly wheedly — and remarkably sanctimonious for saying nothing. As for Tech N9ne, he leans on the chopper style sparingly. Mostly he’s all growl and snap, a grown man/independent contractor pulling up the tights and stepping into the ring for the fun of it. It sure as hell isn’t for the healthcare.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Serj Tankian is an incredible vocalist, as anybody who owns the System of a Down discography will attest, as nimble or nasal or nasty as he wants to be. But oh lord, nobody should be letting him on stompathon hip-hop tracks to off-key bleat about “holding guns while reading biiii-blllesss“. Especially when Tech — a technical beast who appears to be the ultimate hip-hop cult artist — can outsing him without even trying. Tech bustles on regardless, but Tankian did him pretty foul on this one, yikes.
[3]

Crystal Leww: This sounds like what happens when conscious rap combines with System of a Down politics and sonics. Oh wait…
[3]

A++ would buy all the product placements in this video.

[Video][Website]
[7.88]Jonathan Bogart: I’d use a phrase like “the Janelle Monáe of Nigeria” if I didn’t know that it would be misleading in at least two ways: first, Temi is proportionately more popular in Nigeria than Janelle is in the US; and second, she’s nobody’s adjunct. “Pata Pata” is, I’m informed, Lagosian slang for “let it be,” but this snarky, sassy, stomping breakup song doesn’t leave anything where it found it. Song of the goddamn year.
[10]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Baby, what would you like to hear?” Temi Dollface begins “Pata Pata” with a dialogue where there has been none — emotional stasis is the topic here, necessary endings are planned, problems are divulged. It’s the standard I’m-done-with-this-scrub pop narrative. Dollface is aware that you’ve heard this tale before. One gets the feeling that the artist’s also asking how you, the listener, would like this story to be framed. Would you like it with some humour? There she is, batting eyelashes and deciding it would be too insincere to claim that she ever loved the dope. Some relief? The verses’ mouth-music backing vocals ease towards a future-azonto shuffle designed for speaker devastation. Some metatextuality? “Pata Pata” touches on relationship dramas by Rose Royce and George Benson during the verses, revisits Kelis’s Neptunian odysseys in a spacey middle-eight and turns a Yoruban sample of the title into a Greek chorus. Some heart, maybe? By the climax, Dollface has allowed the frustration to bubble over. She pushes her voice with gusto into each corners of the track, switching between English and Nigerian patois as the emotion flows out. Would you like all of that in approximately four minutes? Done and done. “Baby, what would you like to hear?” What else could you possibly want?
[9]

Iain Mew: Temi’s is a massively assured and flexible performance, sounding equally commanding over the wide menu of fizzy electro and soul that “Pata Pata” offers. The moment that won me over completely, though, is “we can go on pretending like baby it’s alright”, sweet enough to show she’s tempted to do so but rolling seamlessly into mocking the very idea.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Indelible hook with the precision of a piston engine, but placed against the underwritten verses it carries an awful lot of weight. And it’s four minutes long.
[5]

Daisy Le Merrer: With a glum marching band beat like a slowed down “Countdown,” this would have made much more sense of this title than Beyonce’s giddy mess does. Temi Dollface starts on the brink of disaster, asking the tough questions, and ends things when they have nowhere else to go. She’s a brilliant singer, staying on top of a potentially overwelming beat with great poise, just like she’s navigating the end of the relationship she’s singing about.
[9]

Anthony Easton: I love how the part where “it’s alright” pitches up or down, like a wave, depending on where the rest of the production is. The siren bit is equally interesting. It’s almost manic in places. The rest of it, you know we’ve heard this, and we know what it says, so it’s kind of middle-of-the-road — but it has potential.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: With a bassline that’s halfway between electro fanfare and the air rapidly leaving a deflating balloon, “Pata Pata” grabs the ear from the first beat. Temi Dollface’s performance is a thing of wonder too — ironic boredom wedded to one killer hook after the other. The middle-eight gets weird and funky — less a breakdown than a breakout — and the chant of “pata pata” is novel to Anglophone ears while being simple enough to earworm. This is original and creative pop of the kind we need a lot more of in the world.
[8]

Brad Shoup: The bass flaps like hope deflated. It’s not a sound I can tolerate in large stretches, but the “we can go on pretending” hook — which won’t be leaving my head ’til the weekend — provides the inflection point. I like this: it gallops.
[8]

Chasing that Call of Duty money..

[Video][Website]
[4.43]

Patrick St. Michel: The way he shouts “butt” when he raps “while I’m wiping my butt”…man, I feel bad for anyone trying to explain to the 14-year-old kids out there why Eminem used to be edgy.
[1]

Alfred Soto: Watching the first generation of rock and rollers reach their thirties, Greil Marcus, who loves Em more than I, warned about survivorhood. At their best the musicians recorded albums that celebrated being alive. The trick is to keep these desires implicit. Otherwise it results in sententious and hectoring albums about survivorhood. But Em is sententious and hectoring, right? So it comes down to whether the metal guitar chords and the way in which Em clangs and bangs like the screwdrivers he alludes to can assuage the sense of dja vu. Survivors never shut up.  
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I like me some shouty, intense Em, particularly when his stresses on the most important words are so angrily percussive. But this needs either a big hook or a powerful one, and what you get instead is a really bad and really trite rock song — all the faults of, say, “Sing For the Moment” magnified — with utterly execrable drum programming on top of that.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Eminem running slow has always been more intimidating then Eminem running fast, though his choice in female vocalists has changed — having someone perform as quickly and as aggro has him might not be a triumph of feminism, but it’s a move forward.
[6]

Mallory O’Donnell: Can anyone really still stomach Eminem? He turned almost instantly (circa “Stan”) into such a complete self-parody that Billy Idol has idol envy. Where once was undeniable freestyling skill and a slight hint of transgression there is now only a leering, self-obsessed mask that contemplates itself over stolid 80’s metal stroke tracks. Enough already.
[2]

Brad Shoup: The wack rock continues as Em raids his closet for fuel canisters. His delivery game is tight; there’s hardly a remnant here of his brown period, and even at this level of vagueness, his ability to turn words into see-saws — to redistribute weight at a whim — is sharper than ever. He used to sound like the most prepared dude at the freestyle sessions. Now, he raps like he’s afraid to stop: enjambment everywhere, lines that test the tensile strength of vowels. At no point is any of this fun. It’s more like watching a very angry craftsman building a doghouse. He wants to talk about toolboxes, but he’s working with a backing track that I can only describe as Jim Johnston entrance music. It sounds like off-brand Aerosmith. 
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: If any couplet jumps out from Eminem’s verses, it’s this: “I can see the finish line with each line that I finish/I’m so close to my goals/ I can almost pole-vault/over the goal post!” It makes you wonder what exactly Em has to prove to himself anymore, and exactly what makes “Survival” fascinating. He has amassed a professional athlete’s obsession with getting better: that frame of mind that each ring and trophy and award isn’t satisfying enough, that there’s more left to topple, more achievements to chase. We all know this is hogwash. Em doesn’t need to topple any more towers. He can either (1) rehash former glories for the needs of franchises or (2) follow the ‘respectable artist’ narrative and work with Rick goddamn Rubin. When you’ve got nothing left to prove in rap, the choices are far and few between, no matter how much you think you gotta keep crushing. For the record, (1) is a better listening experience than (2).
[6]

Bobby Football!

[Video][Website]
[5.22]

Andy Hutchins: B.o.B’s incredible impression of seven different West Coast new jacks at once on the hook is his best move on the track, but getting Tity 2 Bracelet on this particular DJ Mustard beat deserves kudos: He rips it for eight bars (“Black on 28s, it remind me of February/Day you could fuck with me, that would be Neveruary”) before running out of steam, and sounds just great over one of the more vaporously hypnotic instrumentals of the year.
[6]

David Turner: DJ Mustard has a terrible Wikipedia page. There is no production discography page, just a few paragraph highlighting random songs, that is it. I’m sure the people at Roc Nation are too busy to give it a real update, but when DJ Mustard along with Mike Will Made and Lex Luger are some of the biggest rap producers of the 2000s, shouldn’t his wikipage show this? Though still best known for Tyga’s “Rack City,” “Headband” with its whistling and “Woah” adlibs is a much more goofyball single even compared to the toothless Tyga. And major respect,wait may not that, maybe more major bizarre appreciation that 2 Chainz starts his verse saying “Whistling Dixie.”
[7]

Anthony Easton: Actually whistling Dixie for a full minute or so before talking about “Whistling Dixie” is a much more audacious move than Brad Paisley singing it enfolded it into the mess of Southern “Comfort Zone.” That the song is connected to a voice that is chopped and scorched suggests that the melodic quality of the whistling has a kind of resting quality — B.o.B. knows and ironically reworks the source well.
[6]

David Lee: Juelz through the looking glass: pussies do the whistling now (h/t Drake), smirky minimalist loops have supplanted gritty beats, and braggadocio has been abandoned in favor of ganja slurring. B.o.B’s performance comes off as cobbled together, an uneven pastiche of New Boyz and T.I. But it works, thanks to 2 Chainz’s characteristic levity (“neveruary” is my favorite neologism since I don’t know when) and DJ Mustard’s ratchet wizardry. I’m sure that, eventually, the whistle loop turns grating but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: B.o.B. has a lot of issues with his portions of “Headband,” but for some reason I can’t get over his Old Spice joke — the dude in those ads didn’t even whistle! Anyway, B.o.B. is terrible; all two points here come courtesy of 2 Chainz, who smashes his verse. He even makes a line like “chain hang to my ding-a-ling” sound great. If this was just him, this would score way higher. Yet B.o.B. headlines this and he’s not nearly as endearing.
[2]

Brad Shoup: Another one for the whistling playlist. Yay! Getting major “The Motto” vibes from Mustard’s bass/clap combo, but with lines like “day you can fuck with me/that would be Nev-uary”, 2 Chainz is still living the glory days of “R.I.P.” The hook’s garbage, B.o.B’s not cut out for quotables and way too into similes. You have to spread them out!
[6]

Mallory O’Donnell: Minimal techno wrote the blueprint for much of contemporary hip-hop (as euro-house wrote the rest) : as with much of that minimal techno, this is pretty dull outside of the dim penumbra of club speakers, liquor and drugs. Like tinned frosting on a box cake, the casual misogyny barely registers over the dry, crumbly taste in your mouth.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Whistle hooks are so 2005. As for the stars — well. They turn “Shakira” into “Shakirr” to rhyme with “mirror,” and don’t forget: “I make that pussy whistle like the Old Spice, man.”
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: B.O.B. is a popular rapper with the propensity for making really terrible artistic decisions (here are some), but a popular rapper nonetheless. He occasionally does things that other popular rappers do to remind you he’s not gone full pop (here are some), which brings us to “Headband.” DJ Mustard is on some real tear at the moment, donating deviations on stylised skeleton-bare speaker-maulers to whoever is smart enough to pay him. B.O.B. (or B.O.B.’s A&R) is smart enough to pay him, and DJ Mustard is smart enough to let yet another joker sound indestructible on his shit. 2 Chainz, who previously allowed Mustard to grace his catchphrase magnet “I’m Different,” is as reliable as ever — munching on syllables, crafting dick jokes, switching flows for his own amusement. That likability is something that eludes B.O.B. when he’s attempting to fit into the wider hip-hop landscape. 2 Chainz sure is a goofball, but he’s our goofball. As for his host, you can only feel like he’s someone else’s goofball.
[6]