I don’t know if anyone’s ever mentioned this before but THEY’RE THE SHIT!

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[5.90]

Brad Shoup: Camera on two DUDES playing a GORILLAZ arcade game in a roller rink. Atmosphere is totally lame (little kids, FAT PEOPLE). Suddenly, the machine shakes, light beams from the screen… the GORILLAZ come FLYING out! They’re jamming out on their hot song “DO YA THING” in the middle of the rink. The DUDES look at each other — how could this be possible?! Two old guys look up from playing chess behind the rental counter — all of a sudden, a CAMO-COLORED LASER shoots from Noodle’s guitar and turns the old guys into ANDRÉ THREE THOUSAND and JAMES MURPHY! André hands out tricked-out Converse Limited Edition Gorillaz All-Star skates to everybody and also starts RAPPING. He is assisted in handing out skates by the blonde-wigged girls with weird pasties from the “B.O.B.” video. With great suddenness, the doors to the roller rink burst open. Cut to the dudes being PSYCHED. Here come the girls — from BOTH kinds of races and all kinds of shapes between 5’7″ and 5’9″ and also 108 to 119 lbs. Their eyes go CRAZY with desires because the dudes appreciate LEFT-OF-CENTER pop songs that sound like a keyboard clinching its ASSHOLE for 13 minutes. James Murphy pulls down his sunglasses and gives the camera the FINGERGUN — he approves! Everyone is skating and taking pictures in PHOTOBOOTHS. A sudden shot as the camera zooms out from the dudes’ eyes. The roller rink is just as boring as before and the arcade game says PLAY AGAIN? It was all a dream… OR WAS IT?! 
[3]

Sabina Tang: Can Gorillaz return to a narrative state that is not post-rockstar addled-symptom-of-our-times malaise? The living room TV was playing a clip of dancing Noodle from “Dare,” a reminder that the music used to be sprightly and the beats not made by Damon Albarn on a iPad rented from the Austin W Hotel.
[4]

Iain Mew: Think of this as a new Gorillaz single and it’s disappointing, with none of the collaborators interacting in any meaningful or interesting way and none of the depth of the best stuff of the last two albums. Think of it as a free song hastily put together for an advert and it’s pretty good, but that is no basis for making any kind of compliment. Think of it as an extremely fun throwaway André 3000 solo single, with a long but ignorable intro of Damon rehashing “Feel Good Inc.” plus whatever James Murphy is doing? That works.
[6]

John Seroff: “Do Ya Thing” meanders along pleasantly enough for its first two minutes, even if all I can think about is that Gorillaz tracks almost always need to speed up the beat by 25% or so, and then WHAAM! It’s The Return of André 3000, blazing away at the proper mach speed, name checking The Geto Boys and Slick Rick, sploosh-de-splooshing his onomatopoetic asinine ass off. The fourth time is the charm for me, as Three Stacks finally returns to his glory days after factory-reject guest spots.
[8]

Jer Fairall: The lineup promises the party of the year, but this only really gets moving when André struts in, lampshade on head, towards the end of the night, and by then you’re already checking your watch and wondering if it’s late enough to politely make your exit.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Sounds as patched together as the lineup is. In this case, the patches are particularly threadbare: drums that neither swing nor thump, lounge-bar organ, vocals that sound like a bad Beck imitation (except when they’re André 3000 doing a bad Cee Lo imitation), James Murphy picking a paycheck for some reason. Gorillaz are meant to be cartoonish, but cartoons are fun and exciting and stimulative, and this song is none of those. Dre sounds actually nimble for the first time in ages, but I can’t bring myself to care when his dexterity arrives delivered in musical carbonite.
[2]

Alfred Soto: The vocals straining for an artifice commensurate with a cartoon pop act and squelchbeatz don’t transcend what we expect from a beat happy Yank and Brit with more curiosity than talent. The big “however” is André, rapping as if forcing us to forget he once wanted to sing and singing as if he wanted to be as weird as Albarn (who isn’t).
[6]

Michaela Drapes: James Murphy, the ultimate musical ventriloquist (and you know I mean that in the best way possible) extracts the strongest DNA from Damon Albarn and André 3000 and splices them together to refresh the Gorillaz plotline into something infinitely better than anything on Plastic Island. I’m consistently amazed at the quality of these Converse “Three Artists One Song” collaborations; they always seem potentially doomed to sounds-better-on-paper-than-in-practice hell but are always inevitably better than expected. Can someone pull some more strings (or pay some more money) to get these three to work together all the time?
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: As cynical mishmashes of arbitrary artists with enough residual cool and/or Klout and willingness to sell shoes go, this one’s OK. It’s less OK when it’s on cruise control, more OK when André decides he may well go HAM on the full version. I have no idea how other critics or fans will hear this; I imagine it has a lot to do with whether one sees it as elevating the medium or cheapening the artists. Or one’s stance on “I’M THE SHIT!”
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Let’s be real: proper crediting on this track would go André 3000 ft. Damon Albarn & James Murphy, and on the Three Stacks solo record of my dreams it will be. Damon does his wasted Gorillaz thing for an opening verse, and Murph makes his presence known in the Neu!-meets-PiL of the backing track, but the song — particularly the thirteen-minute epic that should stand as the only definitive version — belongs to Dre, as the most hyperfluent rapper of the modern era, as the sub-Prince crooner we’ve been familiar with for a decade now, and as a Lydonesque, Smithian, Brownish, and Hawkinsy screamer over the pulsing wash that takes up the song’s extended middle section. There’s probably no better metaphor for the masculine id than a dude no one is contradicting screaming “I’M THE SHIT! I’M THE SHIT!” over and over again even unto scatological puns, and despite the drop-dead cool of the musical and subcultural references the middle-aged white men are making sure we notice, Dre’s shrieking bravado cuts clean through it all and into the roiling psyche of the thirteen-year-old boy within — well, okay, within this listener, not gonna make a claim for anyone else. But the real kicker is when the tantrum expends itself, and André enters the machine willingly over a rubber-gospel choir bed, pitchshifting his voice to a parody of masculinity so that he can finally be honest. And honestly? He’d rather not be.
[10]