The Singles Jukebox

Here’s to follow-up hit…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.69]

Pete Baran: A hip-hop ballad version of Lily Allen’s The Fear. Duller than that suggests.
[3]

Spencer Ackerman: “Take my verses too serious/you hate me.” Drake needs to think harder about what that means. There’s a difference between hate and constructive criticism. I guess we’ll get around to reviewing “Forever” soon enough, but it’s on that one that Drake goes the hardest he’s gone so far, and he’s not ready to go verse for verse with Eminem or even Kanye and Wayne. Drake is going to improve with time, but he needs to figure out what he wants to say, because just wanting to be successful isn’t good enough.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I don’t get the buzz and hype behind Drake – he doesn’t seem to be a particularly great rapper by any standard (except his mentor Weezy’s syrup-addled judgement). This track, however, is very appealing, though it’s no fault of Drake’s (or generic R&B hook singer of the moment Trey Songz’s – every generation needs its own Nate Dogg, I guess). A minor-key synth chord, plus a very spare snare, is pretty much all that’s here. It’s eerie and avant-garde along the same lines as “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” and assuredly sounds amazing coming out of a boomin’ system. “Successful” is much greater than the sum of its parts.
[7]

Renato Pagnani: In an effort to trim it down into something digestible for radio, about half of “Successful” is lopped off the original’s 6:15 length. The song is worse for it —- what contributed so much to the original was its molasses slow pace and the football fields worth of empty space only made possible by its extended run-time, which heightened the feeling of ambivalence in Drake and Trey’s desire for “success”. The original almost trails off completely mid-track, a sort of emotional nadir that undermines all the money-cars-hoes talk that comes before and after (Kanye pulls the same trick on “Amazing,” before Jeezy’s entrance, to great effect). “Successful” is a mishmash of emotions that in three minutes doesn’t have enough time to unravel and make the same impact. Plus, the original ends with a terrific Lil Wayne verse. The original gets an [8], the radio edit a [6]. My score here is the split.
[7]

Al Shipley: It feels like Drake must’ve recorded this song before he totally committed to his critic-proof ‘corny, Canadian and proud’ public image, and it’s completely hilarious hearing him try to sell tough guy lines about being “the young spitter that everybody in rap fear.” Still, that beat is pretty great. I bumped this up a point from what I would’ve given it to applaud the decision to take off the Lil Wayne verse that was always an incongruous buzzkill on the original track.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Anchoring the track on rimshots and minor key synth menace is not my idea of success, unless Drake thought 808 and Heartbreak is akin to a DJ Shadow record. He’s way too young and ambitious to remind us that “the tour bus looks like a freak show” without affect.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: “Baby you my A-thing” in “Best I Ever Had” is definitely in the running for my personal “Most Grating Radio Hook Of The Year Award,” and Drake’s bored recitiation of that song’s title line isn’t far behind. This followup, though, has a palpably blues-like sadnesss to it, thanks mainly to Trey Songz and whoever programmed the gloomy background music. Drake seems to be on the defensive, going for a “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” mood maybe, but he’s such a dull rapper that I don’t remotely follow the specifics. A shame, since I get the idea that “successful” here might not really mean “getting rich and famous” so much as “capably pulling off the task in front of me”; the clue is Trey’s self-questioning “I suppose.”
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: “Any awards show or party I get fly for it/I know that it’s coming, I just hope that I’m alive for it” takes things a little too martyr-ward for my taste, not that this 808s-and-preemptive-heartbreak demo-plus elicited much sympathy with a chorus that goes, entirely, “I just wanna be successful.” Take it to MySpace, duder.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: It’s an odd tune; the rapper sounds as if he were suspended in a void, a song-experiment conducted in vitro, as if in preparation for the hurly-burly of a genuine career. As a result, his sharply voiced declamations sound meditative rather than hubristic, and Trey Songz’s haunted chorus less an unpleasant cry of entitlement and more a sigh of ambition. Hard work and determination are laudable, of course, but “I just want to be successful” is a plea to be released from the burden of expectation, and one oddly appropriate for Drake at this point in his career. It’s not a respectable sentiment, but, as a nagging thought at the back of his mind, it’s an understandable and intriguingly explored weakness.
[8]

Hillary Brown: You know how Courtney Love is able to get away with far more than anyone else who attempts her kind of ugly self-revelatory autobiographical exposure? This is where I posit a theory that Kanye West is the same kind of figure and put forward Drake’s mope on fame as an example that demonstrates exactly what I’m talking about. The production’s fine. It’s not uninteresting. There’s something that’s at least attempting to be striking and thoughtful. It should be the same thing (although, yes, Drake and Trey Songz both have far better voices, technically, than Yeezy), but it’s not. Is it star power that’s missing? Sheer weirdness? It’s some kind of life force at very least.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Sure, the lyrical content here is banal, but if you swapped our rappers for someone more charismatic or at least someone more fitting for the floaty production and Trey Songz’s oddly wistful chorus hook, this could be a winner. Extra point for the surprisingly effective confession of confusion at the end.
[6]

John Seroff: “Successful”‘s minimal melancholy melody sounds a bit like a darker version of 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love“, but with the pleasant addition of Trey Songz moaning cries of desperation and unfulfillable desire. Put Bun B or Scarface on this hook and you’d likely get an introspective look at the pointlessness of material gains and a possible top ten of the year. Sadly, we get Drake. It’s not that the Canadian Club flavor of the month is untalented exactly; his drawling voice, sloppy run-on flow and whispered exclamatory asides bring to mind a very sleepy Lil’ Wayne. The issue is that Drake is just vocally unimpressive (honestly, _I_ can rap on this level) and lyrically uninspired; lines like “the young spitter that everyone in rap fear” are not only unearned, they’re untrue. I prefer the video mix which exchanges meh for musical by subbing in Songz for a verse as well. Better yet, try the superior Soulja Boy Tell Em cover; it’s less boring after the first five listens.
[6]

Rodney J. Greene: Surprisingly meditative and restrained for an instant star’s second single, the point at which most would either be reaching for eventitude or trying to make lightning strike twice. More pompous production would tip the balancing act Drake walks between celebration of and ambivalence about his newfound success, but the sparse backdrop, barely more than wistful organ chords and a snapping 808 snare, allows him to walk that tightrope with grace. His real accomplishment, though, is that he somehow wrings a modicum of poignance from the most mediocre rap hookman in history.
[7]