The Singles Jukebox

Saw the video for “The Boy Is Mine” the other night, still holds up…

[Website]
[4.69]

Alex Ostroff: Monica opens this with “You said you’d take me to the Jay-Z concert last night.” Winehouse pulled this trick in “Me and Mr Jones” without ever directly mentioning Nas, and still managed to simultaneously sound both more upset and less codependent.
[4]

Alex Macpherson: Starts by reducing a classic, wickedly barbed Erykah Badu skit to a wearisome nag, and proceeds along those lines in such a way that you realise exactly why the dude bailed on that Jay-Z concert. Especially if Monica was just going to bring her annoying, loud, unsubtle friend along to butt in at every opportunity.
[4]

Matt Cibula: Monica does a pretty great thing with all of her vocals, like usual, but I must admit that I was mostly just waiting for Missy’s part, which is somewhere south of underwhelming.
[5]

Anthony Easton: A much better showcase for the throwback quality of Monica’s voice; the Missy details are baroque ornament on a perfect plain work.
[7]

John Seroff: This is Missy at her least appealing: aping 50 Cent, barking VOs like she’s afraid we’ve forgotten her and rapping with a ponderous stride that suggests she’s wearing hip waders in the studio.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Missy Elliot’s vocal presence and the great, throwback loops that make up “Let Me Know” are all very reminiscent of Tweet’s great Missy-assisted “Turn Da Lights Off” from 2004. But while that song had the dreamy quality of a hazy, oddly intense reverie, “Let Me Know” is harder-edged. The production sounds almost like RZA gone R’n’B and the main reason why I’d rather listen to “Turn Da Lights Off” is simply that Monica isn’t a compelling enough performer to do it justice.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Monica’s perfectly okay voice sounds perfectly okay atop a track that Missy could have lifted from Supa Dupa Fly, and that’s part of the appeal: 1997 here and forever, stupid interjections undergirding the sincere emotions. The difference is Missy, who’s quietly turning subtext into text. Wonder what else she’s been doing on sabbatical. And who.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Beginning about being stood up for Jay-Z concert could pass for parody, and gets more annoying when Monica turns histrionic; boasts about multimillion dollar record deal feel somewhat delusionary; Missy’s rap could’ve been done by anybody. Is that her grunting like Lil Jon, too?
[4]

Briony Edwards: Pleasant enough, apart from Missy’s occasional punchy deliveries, but this song is harshly boring – the sort of song you could hear 1000 times in the background and never actually realise you’d heard it at all.
[4]

Al Shipley: “So Gone” is a minor classic, and possibly the last one either Monica or Missy’s been involved in. And this song definitely isn’t looking to break that streak of misses of since then.
[4]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [2]
Michaelangelo Matos: [4]
Martin Skidmore: [7]

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