Tuesday, October 21st, 2014

Yellow Claw & Cesqeaux ft. Kalibwoy – Legends

Diplo’s Dutch buddies of course…


[Video][Website]
[4.88]

Madeleine Lee: You really have to lean on an organ’s bass pedals to get a note out. Even though it’s electronic, the bass of “Legends” has that lean, that resonance squeezed out by human weight, and it gives a nice, sinister heft to what would otherwise be a generic boast over a generic dub-trap pattern.
[6]

Abby Waysdorf: Yellow Claw has become a name I look for, although my absolute unfamiliarity with whatever genre they’re working in makes it hard for me to explain what I like about them. I just think they’re neat, with their blend of really loud dance music and hip-hop and all the things the kids are into these days, I’m assuming. “Legends” doesn’t quite do it for me as much as some of their other songs, I think because it lacks the pop flash of “Shotgun” or “Thunder” (I’m old-fashioned and like a chorus). But it’s still fun, maintaining the over-the-topness I associate with Yellow Claw, the sounds and styles piling up on top of each other into only-somewhat coherence. More is more, as I always say.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: The snares here are just a bit too clunky, the 808 kicks boom a little too sharply and I’ve never understood why trap thinks those nasal motorcycle-revving noises are particularly hot. Further, Kalibwoy sounds like your typical rent-a-ragga, which in 2014 means some weak Mavado and Tommy Lee Sparta biting. But who gives a fuck about actual black artforms in the 21st century? Let’s just turn up!
[2]

Brad Shoup: They stretch Kalibwoy’s “legends” into something terrifically dreadful, and then they just turn him into a cartoon for the windup. Yellow Claw could’ve built an entire grandiose trap track around him, instead of tossing him into an EDM blender.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I wanted this to ramp up to previously unknown heights of squeals and grunts. Instead, it slows down into a finger-snapped matrix resembling a kind of hipped-up light jazz.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: TRAP! We’re going to live forever. Toasting trappings aside, this is exactly the same song as “Shotgun” (which holds up, somehow) with almost exactly the same throughline: beginning in medias motivational whatever — this time it’s “we will be legends,” delivered like a 300 hoplite — drop, vigorous apeshit. Where “Legends” departs is where it peters out into water-level atmospherics, then into nothing.
[3]

David Sheffieck: This is exactly the kind of song that should’ve been rendered obsolete by the seismic impact of “Turn Down for What,” but Yellow Claw & co. seem set on proving there’s still life in obnoxious drops when they’re paired with the right combination of shout-along hooks and production twists. I didn’t expect it, but it works for me — the drop-out at 2:34 is a genuine surprise, and enough to make me feel like there might still be life in dubstep hybrids after all.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: This might be the best way to make an otherwise shrug-worthy number stand out a bit — make the drop sound like a pack of metallic bees. 
[5]

Reader average: [4] (1 vote)

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