And that’s our handclap quota exhausted for the year and it’s only halfway done.

[Video][Website]
[4.44]

David Sheffieck: It’s like, how many more handclaps could there be? And the answer is none. None more handclaps.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: I don’t think you could work harder at having a greater mass of bad pop parts here. The bridge is weak and pointless, this beat doesn’t slump as much as it just sort of rudely distrupts any chance of a vibe, and I swear they’re trying to lie to me and say that terrible breakdown is a chorus. Not to mention at no point are the lyrics… anything. If you wanted a good idea of a sort of unabashedly deluded parody of pop, you’d get it right here.
[1]

Alfred Soto: I listened to it six times without getting a grasp of it. Its mid-’00s-Destiny Child indebtedness lacks verve, imagination, spirit; “Touch” plays like listening to a vocal-free demo of “Lose My Breath.” 
[5]

Iain Mew: The strobe-lit dancing chorus is clever in the best way. Even when some of the rest of the song gets a bit directionless, that moment is always just around the corner to save it.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: “Touch touch touch touch touch touch,” she says, while the synths pop and lock. 
[5]

Cédric Le Merrer: Imagine Tambourine with 60% less things going on, and at a slower pace too. Turns out you still have plenty happening, plus you’ve left some room for an actual melodic vocal performance. On this front Anda delivers, acting as the adult in the room. She’s sexy but not thirsty, sure of herself and of her charm. All of this is, by the way, exactly the opposite of the supposed “manic” quality indiscriminately ascribed to all k-pop by people with questionable ears.
[8]

Will Adams: Is this even a song? It just trudges along with its half-assed handclaps until the chorus, which immediately crosses the fine line between hooky and repetitive. But the worst comes with what I can only assume was supposed to be a drop: no dynamic change, no change in texture other than an awful synth-kazoo lead, and nothing inspiring me to feel anything other than powerful boredom.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Most of my interest in this song comes from how impressively the video rips off Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Because, really, just going touch touch touch touch clap clap clap clap touch touch touch touch until all hope is lost over some damp squibs of bass is a right slog.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: More like a “Touch” overboard, if you ask me. The verses are solid clap-a-longs, and that bridge adds a bit of sweetness to the song, but the “drop” or whatever is covered in dust from 2010.
[5]

Or possibly Namie Am-erie.

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Natasha Genet Avery: Amuro may have been going for “70s influenced 90s R&B and hip-hop and 80s dance beats” but those first synth jabs took me right to early Passion Pit — anthemic, explosive, giddy. The chorus ascends to celestial heights when Amuro nails a surprising interval (“shi-i-INE,” “ri-i-IGHT”).
[8]

Iain Mew: Its touch is more assured than golden, but almost exactly a decade on from Amerie’s “1 Thing” is a good time to record something that sounds like “1 Thing” after its prospective couple have been together for ten years.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: This would be such a monstrous jam if Namie Amuro didn’t ravage notes within her throat. Such a good song, wasted on star-power.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The horn stabs jump out of the speakers and make such an impressive introduction that I expected to turn around and see Amuro descending an enormous gold staircase into my living room. The “we got the touch/it’s golden” section towards the end drags a bit, but the chorus is confident and celebratory.
[8]

Alfred Soto: “Golden Touch” sports some of the relentlessness of “1 Thing,” with the way the brass is mixed complementing Amuro’s chalky tones.
[6]

Megan Harrington: Ever tried drinking a reheated latte? 
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Obviously the synth stabs harken to “Crazy In Love”/”1 Thing,” but there’s more to this than those. Amuro’s vocal is assured and confident and sexy, and the production on this uptempo R&B banger just keeps pushing and pushing. And those synth stabs are superb, of course. 
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Japanese radio tends to play the first verse and first chorus of a song before cutting it off, fearful that someone out there will just record the single instead of running over to Tower Records to spend $10 on it. Accordingly, one major criterion for determining a “song of the summer” — the number of passing cars blaring said tune — doesn’t really apply. “Golden Touch” only needs a commercial-break worth of time, though, to assert itself. Namie Amuro’s greatest skill has always been her ability to adapt to new styles, and after years of “hip-pop” and bad Jamaican accents, she finally got around to making a big confetti cannon of a pop song. Every few beats burst like fireworks, and it all builds up to the best hook Amuro’s ever come across, and she makes the most of it. This just sounds like summer to me, big and hopeful and joyful and simple but effective. Twenty seconds of this could get a car heading to a beach singing along.
[10]

Scott Mildenhall: All that WAH WAH WAHing might get a bit WAH WAH WAH annoying when this is in heavy rotation, but in moderation it’s a vital jolt in what is otherwise a song going through the motions. There is vigour with that, partly provided by what must be 2015’s first “Coco Jamboo” ripoff in the chorus, but if that stops Pitbull from releasing his then it could yet be a drawback.
[6]

Will Adams: Owing some of its nimble charm (and horn stabs) to Cher Lloyd’s “I Wish,” “Golden Touch” is one of those singles that needs not do more than radiate light to be a surefire summer soundtrack. But it was the “Make me shi-ee-ii-ee-ii-iiine!” line that got me, that unexpected upward leap in the melody confirming “Golden Touch” as having the extra edge of memorability going for it.
[8]

Cédric Le Merrer: The beat is a laid back Rich Harrison and if that doesn’t sound like your idea of a good summer jam, I’m sorry for you but I’ll be over there making a mojito pitcher.
[7]

And now a lady who we’ve missed much…

[Video][Website]
[7.20]

Alfred Soto: Shrewd marketing to start a comeback with the Janet of “Making Love in the Rain” and “That’s The Way Love Goes” instead of immediately pissing us off with recherché beats attached to a putative fast one. That steady organ is as seductive as her croon. Welcome back.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: The low-rider bounce of this creeper of a track seems so oddly throwback yet for all its ‘grown and sexy’ vibes it never feels too long in the tooth.
[7]

Josh Winters: Cozy and familiar like your favorite wool sweater, but sensual in essence like a jasmine vanilla candle. I imagine Janet taking breaks from watching the rain drip down her window to slowly vibe with herself in the dim lighting, an act that seems silly when spoken about yet nourishes the soul when performed.
[8]

Cédric Le Merrer: I learned to love slow jams thanks to Janet, Jimmy and Terry. “No Sleeep” is a solid example bolstered by that too rare feeling of things being exactly as they should.
[8]

Josh Love: When you’ve been away this long and are this much of an icon I’m more than willing to let slide a slice of such pure classicism. There are certainly timelier moves Janet could be making that would demonstrate real, admirable risk, but it’s hard to blame any legend for staying in their lane when changing with the times more often gets mocked than lauded for bravery (especially, it seems, if you’re a woman).
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: “Plush,” she says, and she’s right. I am so grateful that Janet, coming back with new music for the first time in six years, a) didn’t feel the need to team with a hot rapper like Wale or Meek Mill (nothing against them) or a fire producer like DJ Mustard, and perhaps more importantly b) did reunite with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, so the three of them can make magic again. This is pretty much exactly what Janet should be doing these days, making slinky, grown, sexy music. She rides a midtempo groove, sexy and summery simultaneously, and sings (and coos) sweet somethings: yes.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Never has a song sounded more like Janet. Appropriately enough, the tune that plays immediately after “No Sleeep” on Spotify is “That’s the Way Love Goes,” couching the new single as the perfect return to form for Ms. Jackson, somewhere in between the tried-and-true classic and the underappreciated “Someday Is Tonight.” “No Sleeep” features Jackson at her most vulnerable, illuminating the sheer delicacy of her voice, and the indelible imprint of one of America’s greatest musical instruments. Repeat, please.
[9]

Will Adams: Warm and hushed, “No Sleeep” looks better in light of the unfortunate string of Janet singles preceding it. Her whispery tone, despite making sense here, comes off as an overused trick, so it’s nice when she begins to push in the song’s final minute.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Any given ten seconds of this is kind of pretty, but a few songs aside (“Everytime” is an underrated example) her voice has never sold  intimacy to me; I’ve always loved her as a revolutionary with outsize set pieces like “Escapade,” “Love Will Never Do” or “Nasty.” It’s no doubt a failure on my part as a human being but I’ve always found Janet in slinky-chilled mode as a purveyor of the immaculate but dull. That especially went for “That’s The Way Love Goes” — back in the 1990s I remembered how much more airplay it got than “The Pleasure Principle” and took its boring reign over the music shows on TV near-personally. Now I listen to this song cut from the same cloth and literally cannot understand how it doesn’t put everyone to sleep, and want to give it a really low score in retaliation. But it gets some points because, hey, kind of pretty.
[5]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Imagine the smell of a garden after a rain: lush, verdant, earthy, mineral. The air feels humid, but clean. Open your eyes and it’s twilight, with purple light seeping into everything, as if you could see the aura of every branch. There’s a hush which is broken only by crickets, who slowly grow more bold; their vibrations create a rhythm. And then Janet comes in.
[9]

Vegan Monday: After tempeh, we eat our veggies…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Micha Cavaseno: Casey Veggies once counted amongst Odd Future’s ranks, yet he inexplicably left the group due to managerial advice. Apparently that was great advice because he’s done so well for himself in the past 8 years by just wandering around making commercial records that nobody listens to. He’s like one of those network TV series that exists for 10 years but you’ve never heard someone say they watch it. Man, even DOM KENNEDY has done better than Casey Veggies. On “Backflip,” nothing changes for Casey, because he needs actually enjoyable rapper YG to perform a charity verse full of personality, confidence, and spontaneity. The less said about Iamsu’s lazy Young Thug-biting hook the better.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Casey Veggies, in spite of his terrible nom de plume, has a pretty decent flow on his verse here; YG and Iamsu! (it’s like the League of Awful Rapper Names) add nothing, and the production is limp. 
[2]

Natasha Genet Avery: YG has a question to ask: can he buy your agency? I thought “Up!” was massively underrated and apparently so did Iamsu: with “Backflip,” he dug up his earlier formula, swapped in some minor chords, and hoped for the best. This could have worked — the instrumental hook is catchy and Casey Veggies’ bars are passable — but YG’s creepy and coercive verse drains the song of any levity. His object of interest is financially desperate (car payment due tomorrow!) and so the entrepreneurial YG sees this as an opportunity for her to perform various sex acts for him and his friends. To underscore the fact that he views women as walking vending machines, YG also riffs off the idea of female bisexuality as nothing more than a sweet treat men can buy. Sort of disappointing in a post-“I Don’t Mind” world.
[3]

Brad Shoup: It’s “21 Questions,” give or take 20, and it was going about as well as you’d think until YG goes “she just tryin’ to get rid of that stress/so every question I ask she say ‘yeah’.” Iamsu! crafts a slightly unsettling track: a steady leering bottom note cut with darting percussion. It’s hard to get comfortable, as you’d imagine.
[4]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Young and fun. Throwback elements infuse a track that also tends to sound dated; it came out in January, so it’s still carrying that 2014 aura with it. If this came out on “Empire,” it would be a fresh change of pace. Hitting the Top 40, it’s pleasant and fits in well, but it doesn’t do much more than that. And you know what? It doesn’t need to.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Easy, breezy, beautiful: “Backflip” doesn’t try too hard, and succeeds.  
[5]

Smear shapes…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Thomas Inskeep: Nicely retro new wave-pop in Welsh, from the ex-Pipettes singer. This actually sounds as if it was beamed in from 1982, rather than being an homage.
[6]

Brad Shoup: It has the wrong kind of feels for Italo-disco, but the focus on robots is roughly in range. That descending keyboard progression is wonderful, the whole takeaway for me: a fog-bound walk through a sudden future.
[5]

Iain Mew: It reminds me of Little Boots’ “Motorway”, but stranger and more fraught, not just a journey but an escape. Happily the limited translations I can find support the element of intriguing wrongness which I get from all the rusted edges of its not quite slick synth pop.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: If I was travelling through space, this is the soundtrack I’d imagine that would join me. The sensation of not being attached to any land is in the subtle beat and the stars are in the sparkling keyboard notes while Gwenno’s slightly distant voice floats aimlessly — because where can you go when there is only darkness around you? 
[8]

Alfred Soto: I can’t imagine recording this vocal dry; the echo adds the resonance to this minor chord, rumbling dance number flush with late eighties signifiers.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Its the little guitar strumming bit, more echoing flutter than actual riff. It manages to give you that instinctual bit of nervy edge coming from hurrying down a path in the woods or waiting in a subway tunnel. Alone, but unsure if being alone or not is the best alternative. Naturally, this sort of Euro-Retro approach to post-punk soundbites is very familiar; even if you don’t regularly listen to The Honeymoon Killers to feel morose, you’ve probably heard enough of Johnny Jewel’s work to know this vibe. Its a very simple yet effective slip of pop winking at you for a minute, and you’re not sure if it was a trick of the eye.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Nice drum work. The rest of the single reminds me of a Chinese folk album I once found on the side of the road. Lots of strings. I’d rather just listen to Celtic Woman.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: My first point of comparison was Bat For Lashes’ “Daniel,” only with an added layer of cloaking. Not only don’t I speak Welsh, but Gwenno weaves in and out and behind the backing like through a fog. You’ve got to listen closely but it’s awfully pretty.
[8]

The title refers to his feelings about his copy of Chocolate Factory…

[Video][Website]
[6.22]

Thomas Inskeep: Finally: a) a Jess Glynne single that makes good use of her warbly voice, b) a disco-y summer banger of a single, c) the return of hot-and-cold Tinie Tempah, firmly in “hot” mode here. I was certain this was based on a sample, but apparently Tempah wrote it himself, with Bless Beats behind the boards. “Not Letting Go” comes off aces, the rare summer-focused single that sounds summery. It also sounds timeless — echoes of 1990 drum programming in the snare track underpinning the second verse, but it isn’t tied to any particular time or era. This soars above everything.
[9]

Scott Mildenhall: So laid-back that it’s fallen off its chair, knocked its head and been advised to take it easy. Such an innocuous production is quite uncharacteristic for Tinie, and the polar opposite of the low-in-the-mix Glynne’s waveform-transcending solo single. Few songs are so nonabrasive, and therein lies the problem: “Not Letting Go” is very pleasant background music, but immediately forgettable.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Awkwardly clipped phrasing and overall poor performance on Glynne’s part does damage to the intended miles this harmless summer roller Tempah’s cooked up. His flow has not changed in the past decade, nor has his made-for-TV movie level visions for every single, but he’s still not without his charms as a purveyor.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The rap is at a Pras level of competence, but Glynne and the backing track — burbling bass and four-on-the-floor thunk — offer compensatory pleasures. Should a wedding deejay select it, I’ll dance.
[5]

Ramzi Awn: Clean enough to reel you in but unfocused, “Not Letting Go” falls somewhere between “Bitch I’m Madonna” and vintage Robyn: a tough line to straddle.
[4]

David Sheffieck: Two things I learned from this: Tinie really, really likes R. Kelly and it’s awkward by the second time around; 2) We are living in a golden age of romantic rap songs and I am here for every one.
[7]

Iain Mew: I guess Tinie didn’t get the memo about R. Kelly, or at least found the relatable signifier potential of “Ignition (Remix)” and “I Believe I Can Fly” too good to resist. “She like the hook but she don’t know the verse” is cheekily meta in a song where his contributions are more charm over content than he’s ever gone on his own records before. He’s there to sweep us along to the chorus, and luckily it’s Jess Glynne’s warmest and most glorious yet.
[8]

Andy Hutchins: Sufficiently sunny, and with a passable Joss Stone impersonation from Ms. Glynne, but: I’ve listened to this twice, and the only thing I remember Tinie saying is the pre-hook in which he laments the hook being the only memorable part of his song. Well-prophecied, bruv.
[5]

Brad Shoup: A sun-splashed take on “Ride Wit Me,” with a total posi performance from Tinie and some Cool & Dre-style non-grime production from Bless Beats. Glynne turns in a lovestruck, kinda androgynous hook, like JT giving a shit. As the only #1 R. Kelly’s ever gonna be on again, it’s pretty great.
[7]

The road to OneRepublic is paved with good intentions.

[Video][Website]
[3.33]

Iain Mew: I haven’t cared for anything they’ve done, but credit to them for realizing that “Counting Stars” would work just as well transformed by ridiculous miniature EDM drops.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Maroon 5 for hootenannies with keyboards.
[3]

Ramzi Awn: I played with matches as a kid, too. Only I didn’t sound so much like Maroon 5. Boring never sounded so festive.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: This is the sound of Maroon 5 gang-banging Imagine Dragons.
[0]

Scott Mildenhall: Some people might think that being signed and managed by a company that runs so much of the UK radio market that it was forced to sell some of it off could be a hindrance, but they’re very hard to find. On this showing Lawson’s sound has been updated about as drastically as the Heart playlist, but that chug is tried, tested and liable to produce brilliance. This Bo Diddley angle isn’t exactly dynamic, but the lyrics are easy to ignore, and touches like the move into warp speed during the breakdown do prevent it from being an outright pastiche, as if that were an issue.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: More tedious #AMERICANA (knew we weren’t out of the woods yet), with hammy pop production and a Patrick Stump style “soulful” whine. I can’t hit this with enough “NAUH” through a keyboard.
[2]

Piffle.

[Video][Website]
[3.80]

Edward Okulicz: A victory lap fanfare for a race nobody else cares about.
[2]

Iain Mew: Soundtrack-ready fare that’s been deprived of the magnificent flock of birds or glacier or whatever it would need to have any effect.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Basically a ‘cool kids club’ approach to the Giorgio & Daft Punk “THE OLD GUY IS PRETTY HIP” phenomena. I half expect that that any minute now, we’re going to be treated to more event records like, I don’t know, The Horrors backing Bernard Sumner, or novelty singles where Chance sings a hook for Arrested Development. Regardless of the intent, the song itself is dull, shifting from martial drum programming to “dance” rhythms. Oh, and some arpeggiated New Age synths, because the old guy has to do something more than be a prop, right?
[2]

Cédric Le Merrer: The Bernard-Henri Levy of electronic music team up with every strategic planner favorite’s case study soundtracker. I may resent some of the associations, but you gotta say they are masters of their schtick. Anything less or more than a five would be dishonest on my part.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Jean-Michel Jarre, I know Giorgio Moroder, and Jean-Michel Jarre, you’re no Giorgio Moroder. And M83 is certainly no Daft Punk. This starts as a dirge and ends as a (s)lightly galloping dirge.
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: This is a song built for a David Beckham on a speedboat moment, a grand emotional release from the Olympian height of reality-distorting absurdity. News that David Guetta and not Jarre will be the one to hold an overblown open-air concert in Paris for Euro 2016 is therefore disappointing. In a just world, this would be the emotional centrepiece of a drones-and-lasers spectacular, the coda to a night with guest performances from Air, Daft Punk, Justice and probably The Supermen Lovers, upon which all would return to the stage and bask in the triumphant confluence of sport, music and shedloads of cash. Obviously Guetta will be amazing, but it’s an opportunity missed.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Meeting idols can freeze you. I don’t know what Jarre contributes to this shimmering non-entity. Maybe he helped it sound like M83.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Jarre worries too much about where he belongs, but M83 can do no wrong. As far as anthems go, “Glory” disappoints.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Zedd with taste. You’d think that would be a more appealing prospect.
[5]

Will Adams: The low end was left to suffer — the synth bass just sits, and the kick is too light — but the switch from the first verse’s plodding to the remainder’s gallop just feels transcendent. It’s vaguely so, thus I can’t rely on it too much, but I bank on this catching me off guard and giving me a moment of flying.
[6]

Ugly always.

[Video][Website]
[2.70]

Katherine St Asaph: “I see what you’re wearing, there’s nothing beneath it / forgive me for staring, forgive me for breathing” — oh, fuck off a cliff. 
[1]

Cédric Le Merrer: We get it EDM kids, you’re all beautiful champion heroes. You don’t sound very convincing to me but Coué’s trick might still do it for you. To my ears, Zedd is a hack who doesn’t even dare to go full bosh when building his beat on a drunk football supporter worthy chorus of papapas. How many energy drinks does ot take for this to sound any good?
[2]

Will Adams: The egregiousness of Zedd re-using his stock template is usually in inverse proportion to how good the song is. (I say “usually” because some of the best moments on True Colors are when he tries something new for once). For every “I Want You to Know” — formulaic, sure, but still punchy — there is something like this. The combination of the drunk sports-chant hook with an ugly rendering of the popular “do me now” conceit make “Beautiful Now” rather unappetizing. The rest is what you’d expect.
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: Zedd is kind of fucked in a sense. His gold mine of emotional swell on “Clarity” worked because it sounded so obvious and familiar despite containing elements that weren’t too conspicuous. Those giddy misfiring late 90s video-game synths, marred to an almost 80s power-ballad level of yearning from Foxes that didn’t overtly try to be an 80s power ballad before the “HERE COMES THE DROP” section came in and helped the record achieve some lazy ‘cool’. He’s not going to get that same success from enlisting a Rolodex of celebrities who put out singles or people who specialize in performing the banal basic requirements of pop. So until he gets that in his head, Zedd’s chances for returning to his former heights are next to nil.
[2]

Anthony Easton: How he whispers at the beginning of this and how excessive he becomes near the end, with a needling production, and an EDM inspired vamping up, reads less an invite to sexy seduction and more of a creepy come-on, especially when he sings being stranded. 
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Another EDM song, another opportunity to acknowledge this is probably a [10] in a giant stadium surrounded by all your friends, another chance to be reminded I’m sitting in my living room drinking coffee instead. That said, the ba-bas in the chorus sure remind me of the “Numa Numa” song.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Song-based EDM designed for maximum festival singalong impact.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Dig, if you will, a picture of “Hey Jude” electronified into a celebration of narcissism.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s what everyone was thinking: the voiced bilabial stop is a sound that has been long neglected in English-language pop’s attempts to make a chorus out of every part of the IPA. Inaccurate, perhaps, but it does seem that going “ba ba ba baba ba ba ba” is harder to prevent from sounding silly than its rhymes. Yes, the Beach Boys used it to great effect, but Gaga swerved it for “Bad Romance,” and that is surely no coincidence. This would have been better if Bellion was going “da.”
[5]

Ramzi Awn: Just what the world needed: another song about how we’re beautiful now. Tonight’s the night. Luckily, I have other plans.
[1]

“Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 6, 7… wait, do I have this right?”

[Video][Website]
[4.67]

Alfred Soto: I suppose Fetty had to prove he was human.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Patterson represent, you miserable wasteland you… For the past month, I have read dozens of declarations of fawning praise of “Trap Queen” which is usually followed with some sort of half-assed apology for him as a rapper. Which is funny because HE’S OBVIOUSLY A RAPPER, AND HE NEEDS NO APOLOGIES. How many young adults develop past their early influences (specifically Gucci Mane, such an overwhelming archetype for Fetty’s flow) when their careers are still in the gestation? And quite frankly how many are instantaneously rewarding? In that regard, I love that we’re not covering the actual follow up in the now Drake-assisted and super melodious “My Way”, but a song featuring the rest of his fellow Remy Boyz (Monty and uh… that other guy). Over Peoples’ cornstarch syrup tooth decay R&Bass track, the Remy Boyz party in the most goonish fashion while Fetty provides wind tunnel siren bayings.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Decent bassline, nothing else. And are people really impressed by the boast that he’s “got a glock in [his Fer]rari”? I’m not.
[2]

Ramzi Awn: Standard Mitsubishi rap. I’m sure it would sound a lot better with a 40 in my hand.
[3]

David Sheffieck: Fetty’s still not great on verses — though “He playing Batman, Fetty’s gonna rob him” is probably a new high — but his way with a hook remains as strong as ever, even if it’s not quite enough to balance out the features barely registering. If Fetty manages to team up with a rapper who knows what they’re doing, one who can provide some kind of contrast to his style rather than paddling frantically in his wake, he’ll really be something to reckon with. Caveat that I also had reservations about “Trap Queen” back in February and it’s since dug in deep; I’m already steeling myself for the early-autumn realization that I needed to score this a few points higher.
[5]

Will Adams: “Trap Queen” blindsided me on first glance, as if it were already being propelled so much that I couldn’t give it a fair shake. “679” won’t get the benefit of that same momentum, though the tepid beat might have something to do with that.
[5]