The Singles Jukebox

I guess “DECENT DECENT” doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely…

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Austin Nguyen: Moon Willis’ track record with Bree Runway has always felt a bit too constrained and safe for her personality to burst through with swagger, and “HOT HOT” adds one more mark to that tally despite the buoyancy of the Busta Rhymes sample. The only difference is that she barely bothered to show up to the songwriting front either, repeating lines just to surpass the 2-minute mark.
[5]

Leah Isobel: Bree’s considerable charisma carries “HOT HOT” through its repetition; I could listen to her toss off the line “it’s a runway kitty like her name is Kate Moss” for at least an hour. It’s a pity that the song is so short.
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Alfred Soto: The words are fine, it’s the weak-ass chorus I can’t get past. There’s a sense that the production suppresses her natural spritz.
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Vikram Joseph: “Damn Daniel” was a riotous, combustible 2020 success story, but it seems to have taken a lot out of Bree Runway if the lassitude of “HOT HOT” is anything to go by. It’s a serviceable Timbaland-lite R&B jam but lacks any real character in either lyrics or production (very high levels of self-confidence still do not, in themselves, amount to a personality). “Ride it real fast like a foreign car,” Bree urges — now I do not claim to know much about cars, foreign or domestic, but this has all the vibrancy of the off-white Nissan Micra my mum used to drive.
[4]

Samson Savill de Jong: In the previous Bree Runway songs we’ve covered, I was impressed by her charisma, specifically her energy and sense of fun, without necessarily finding her actual lyricism something worthy of writing home about. Charisma can only carry you so far though, and “HOT HOT” is where it runs out for me. “Ride a boy face like a Yamaha” is a stellar bar, but outside of that the lyrics are once again not worth committing to memory. But the production doesn’t trouble the memory banks either, unlike previous efforts. It’s a serviceable dance floor ready beat without anything that allows it to rise above base functionality. I can see people liking this, but I just find it disposable — not bad, just something that I’ll never feel the need to listen to again.
[5]

Natasha Genet Avery: With crisp percussion and Neptunes-like synths and sound effects, “Hot Hot” somehow sounds more ’00s than its source material. Bree Runway’s delivery is breezy and confident, swapping the harsher edge of “Apeshit or “ATM” for a more playful, endlessly quotable self-confidence booster. More than anything, “Hot Hot” is a perfect post-pandemic summer song: I want nothing more than to hear this blaring on a bar patio or dance floor, with tipsy people proclaiming their intent to “Ride that boy face like a Yamaha.” Vroom vroom.
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Nortey Dowuona: The plinking keys lope alongside the Timbaland drums and gurgling bass stabs as Bree hops them, chuckling about all these all these pretenders looking like known abuser Trey Songz while riding her Ray Fisher’s face like a Yamaha. (BTW, she’s Ghanaian, so she is getting a 10.)
[10]

Thomas Inskeep: I like the way the sample from Busta’s “Touch It” is utilized, but wish that Runway did more in response. Her lyrics are clever as always, but her delivery leaves me a little lacking. When you’ve set the bar as high as she already has, we expect greatness every time — and this is merely good, not great.
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