Mark Ronson did this first, of course. It was pretty balls then, too…

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[4.00]

Katherine St Asaph: Magic? You’ve got Dr. Luke, you’ve got Rivers Cuomo to reel in the demographic that still nurses their Weezer crushes, you’ve got the hook he’d write. And you’ve stopped moping to show you’ve got chops too. Who needs magic? It’s already golden.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: When I first heard “Let It Rock” by Kevin Rudolf ft. Lil Wayne, I was excited — rap-rock repeats itself, the second time as camp! But aside from the Jonas Bros’ “Burnin’ Up,” with their bodyguard’s cheerfully awful rap verse, this new-old minigenre hasn’t done a lot. Here’s hoping Bobby Ray’s the one to break it out, not just because his rapping is so nimble and witty here that I can’t mind the glam stop, but also because it might keep Rivers Cuomo from releasing new Weezer records. He still gets to act like an ass, but that’s how everyone on the pop charts acts; leave rock to the po-faced contingent building up their 401(k)s.
[8]

Alfred Soto: One half is purposeful mumbling, the other a you-wish lyric by one of the biggest fools of recent rock history. This fool has a prodigious ear for hooks though, which is why I’m surprised this fails to justify its own irrelevance. Cuomo’s been making rock star moves, ironic or not, for so many years I assumed he’d play this better.
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Al Shipley: Although one has been going much longer than the other, the respective careers of Bobby Ray and the Harvard ‘tard have travelled fairly similarly paths: starting firmly within a comfortable rock or rap sound, and steadily heading towards a rock/rap fusion that’s exactly as horrible as it was always destined to be.
[1]

Chuck Eddy: Weezer nostalgia + OutKast nostalgia = 3Oh!3 but worse. Who would have guessed?
[3]

David Raposa: B.o.B stuntin’ and frontin’ like Lil Big Boi, Rivers baiting the hook with Trapper Keeper trash talk & ten-year-old Velveeta, and a backing track that sounds like something the Kidz Bop producers pinched off during a potty break? Please tell me this is a Lonely Island outtake.
[2]

Martin Skidmore: B.o.B.’s flow is bouncy and happy, and the synth chords are pretty punchy, but I can’t feel any magic in the rather dominant Cuomo performance, which rather ruins it for me.
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Erick Bieritz: B.o.B’s “Airplanes” was awful in part because collaborator Hayley Williams’ seriousness made his dopey shallowness so hard to miss. He finds a more pliant partner in Rivers Cuomo, who is willing to establish a goofier baseline for B.o.B to play against. This is probably more notable as savvy marketing than as a creative collaboration, but it does go a long way toward hiding the soft spots on B.o.B’s cluttered cliches and jumbled BEP-style references, so it has to be considered a relative success.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: Rivers Cuomo’s band Weezer had its debut album produced by Ric Ocasek. Ocasek was once in a band called The Cars. The Cars had a great song called “Magic,” which used precise blasts of guitar and carefully applied electronics to create power pop bliss. If you thought Cuomo might have brought some of this inspiration to B.o.B.’s own take on power pop called “Magic,” I bet you’re feeling pretty foolish right now.
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Mallory O’Donnell: Illusions, Rivers. Illusions.
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