The Singles Jukebox

Let’s pretend this picture left us too traumatised to post on Monday or Tuesday. It’s a surprisingly plausible claim…

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[5.38]

Kat Stevens: Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuthin to fuck to!
[6]

Dan MacRae: I had sex to a rap song once. It was “Pull My Hair” by Ying Yang Twins. The experience was intriguing if decidedly uncomfortable. Sadly, this track is too comfortable to be the least bit interesting.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I’d doubt the sanity of anyone who made love to “A Milli,” much less if they gasped and groaned through Auto-Tune.
[5]

Al Shipley: T-Pain is a rap-leaning R&B star the same way Kanye’s a R&B-leaning rap star, so there’s something appropriate about him doing a song that’s conceptually kind of an inverted “Slow Jamz.” It’s also the first sign in a long time that T-Pain might still have some life left in him after that disappointing last album and “D.O.A.” took the wind out of his sails.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Amusing for its intextuality, genius for the line “I can dig into yr coochie, while singing along to Gucci”.
[7]

Asher Steinberg: The key to success in the “music we can listen to while having sex” subgenre is some witty line-drawing between the titles/lyrics of the songs being listened to and the sex being had. T-Pain unfortunately decides to simply go the geographical route – e.g. “we can go to the Bay and listen to Mistah Fab. Or, perchance, we could go down south and listen to Rick Ross. Or how about I stick some East Coast gangsta rap on ye olde grammaphone?” I haven’t heard anything so generic and ecumenical about listening to other people’s music since “Party In The U.S.A.”, and that succeeded because Miley somehow managed to sound sincere about being excited to hear a post-retirement Jay-Z song. Here, not so much.
[3]

Mallory O’Donnell: It’s nice to see old T-Pain finally making the transition from Baroque to Rococco.
[5]

Tyrone Palmer: It’s odd that I feel nostalgic for 3 years ago, but I truly do miss the T-Pain domination of 2007. In subsequent years his ‘gimmick’ (if you want to call it that) has worn off, and the quality of his song-craft deteriorated a bit, but in that year he released a classic album and featured on countless great singles. This song encapsulates everything that made T-Pain circa 2007 so great — masterfully melodic songwriting, novel concepts (“makin’ love” to NWA and Jeezy?), hilarious lyrics (“Straight outta Compton on that pussy… Diggin’ in your coochie while we listenin’ to Gucci”), and smoothed-out snap&b production. Of course hip-hop and R&B are notoriously self-referential, but this song takes it to another level with the beat switches and patchwork chorus. Rick Ross’ guest verse is passable here, though he doesn’t really add much of anything and it irks me that his last couplet doesn’t rhyme.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: The combination of T-Pain’s never less than hefty autotuning and one of the dullest big rappers around is not promising. Gluing together references to other rap hits over a desultory beat is all very well, but you then need something special to lift it above mere record-collection rap. T-Pain’s painfully processed vocals and Rick’s haplessly dull rap is not it.
[2]

Jer Fairall: I still think he’s an untalented dolt, and cobbling together a song out of titles and lyrics of more famous ones does nothing to dispel that belief, but “Imma do you like Kanye, ’cause Imma let you finish” deserves a major tip o’ the hat.
[5]

Zach Lyon: This is only as good as its metaphors, which mostly range from “weird” to “nonsensical”. I guess “comin’ straight outta Compton on that pussy” makes some sense, but the “Elevators (Me and You)” reference is just… creepy. Most of the others are either crammed-in non sequiturs or songs that are already sexual enough that the name-dropping lacks cleverness.
[6]

John Seroff: “We can do it east coast style and I can keep on my fitted”? “Call me straight outta Compton on that pussay baybay”? “Listenin’ to Gucci while I’m diggin in ya cootchie”? You’d have to be pretty dour not to find the occasional giggle in “Rap Song”, but you’d have to be thirteen or under to giggle at a second spin.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: T-Pain is harmless. This song is harmless. That doesn’t mean it’s any good, though.
[5]