The Singles Jukebox

Yep, and they still think it sounds stupid…

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[5.67]

Hillary Brown: Either that or they call you something insulting as they mutter with irritation.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Look, baby, can we talk? No no no — it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I can’t take sex-you-up songs seriously. Blame a perpetual adolescence (or maybe an overdetermined adulthood). You’re there all trying to make it happen, and it’s not like I don’t appreciate the effort, and baby you know you’re good, but I’m sorry, it’s just not happening for me. It’s not you, Trey, it’s me.
[5]

Alfred Soto: I suspect he’d fuck himself if he could, but who would blame him?
[7]

Spencer Ackerman: I could do without the dripping water, but that chorus makes me want to impregnate someone. Although the chick Trigger sexes probably stopped herself from yelling out, “Kells!”
[7]

Al Shipley: R&B’s biggest heartthrob of the moment may not be an outright eccentric like R. Kelly (the guy he jacked his entire sound and style from), but his most sex-obsessed hits also tend to be his goofiest. The cartoonish falsetto in the second verse, the ridiculous enunciation of “knock knock knock” on the intro, wannabe rapper punchlines like “your body is a problem, they call me the problem solver”; the guy could be the clown prince of R&B if he had the slightest bit of self-awareness.
[3]

Michaelangelo Matos: Sure, I get it: he puts the funny parts of R&B love-man-dom right up front, and it helps that I like his voice: it’s got muscle and his falsetto has some humor in it as well as a feathery edge. But this often feels less like a wink shared with the audience than a joke stretched thin, a “lighter side of macho” still too dependent on macho. (Does that make him an R&B Brendan Frasier?)
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Gross. Yet another remedial sex song from another bozo who gives no indication that he’s ever had sex with an actual human being, though he does seem to have heard about it from a couple R-rated movies or R. Kelly hits. Against all odds, he sings competently enough to put the stupid clinical cliches over anyway, and I don’t hate the sound — kinda sounds like he’s recording in the bathtub. So why isn’t he screwing her there?
[4]

John Seroff: The obvious gonzo, sex-you-up precedents for this proud public nuisance of a track can be found in the R. Kelly and Prince catalogs, though those comparisons are maybe more flattering than Songz’s limited emotional and vocal range deserve. The proof is in this puddin’ though: pizzicato strings; the drip of the leaky faucet, “your body’s a problem/they call me the problem solver” Smoove B-ism lyrics, the stunt falsetto, the sheets of chimes, the bluesy and insinuating guitar hook all seamlessly integrate into something engaging, polished and still easy to put on repeat and fuck to. That’s a tough order. Let’s split the difference and call Trey this generation’s Ginuwine… with room to grow.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: I kind of like this, in a “we don’t have an R Kelly single just now” kind of way.
[6]