We don’t necessarily want it right now, at this particular moment, but thanks…

[Video][Website]
[5.44]Katherine St Asaph: The only thing I want to listen to lately is the Goldfrapp album. Specifically, it’s two songs: “Thea,” a midnight dance of a song after which someone will probably be murdered; and “Laurel,” muted like a streetlamp in too much fog, a song after which someone will definitely be murdered because it’s In a Lonely Place. It’s weird, but Cassie fits right in. Over a beat of scare chords and a sample-of-a-sample from “m.A.A.d. City,” the one that goes “I just might suffocate” (or is it “might suffocate you”?), Cassie hangs around, dead-eyed and clear-eyed. She delivers snippets of scenes: offering “you want everything, so let’s do everything,” voice sludgy and deadpan as if “Me & U” really didn’t lead anywhere good; then she’ll muse “I need a new name” like it’s her in the noir. The title is the hook, of sorts; “I know what you want” (or is it “I know what you are”?), and it’s hard to say whether it’s resigned or cagey or threatening, or just there, to project on. (Cassie is likely the most projected-upon artist in R&B. Even this blurb is projecting.) Like much of Cassie’s output lately, it’s better as an interlude than a song; but the menace, at least, feels real.
[7]

Anthony Easton: The lassitude of “I Know What You Want” is almost as sexy as how she refuses to elucidate what exactly everything is, and I find the idea of geographical authenticity as a caution against faux networks of influence fascinating. Extra point for the loose, smokey backing track.
[9]

Patrick St. Michel: Good sample, meh song.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Is this track finished? A treated vocal looking for a hook.
[3]

Brad Shoup: I was getting a real WorldStarCandy vibe, but the “m.A.A.d City” backing and “you want everything” part — which scanned like enabling — were fake clues. Cassie distills the independent thing to its bitterest essence: her own car, her own cash, the right to choose an identity. She lets the last word of each verselet fall like a feather. It’s psychedelically pretty, but it can’t cover for the processing Hail Marys that precede it: creaking recitation, phased vocals searching for harmony but discovering their similar polarization. She needs something major, and it needs to be hers. “King of Hearts” didn’t do it. Neither did “The Boys”.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Draining Kendrick’s heady “m.A.A.d city” of its urgency for the sake of an etherial R&B track just because it can, Cassie fails to replace the remaining void with anything in the way of hooks or purpose. That RockaByeBaby offers a smattering of greater (though still minor) pleasures only makes it all the more baffling that anyone could have considered this formless little mixtape cut a potential single.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Unlike Kendrick’s frantic narration on the original incarnation of the beat, Ventura sounds unruffled. She bathes in luxury where Lamar dredged up demons; where Lamar anticipated dying by the end of the song, Ventura applies the voices of that very threat to help herself. (“It’s RockaBye/now RUN, my n—a.”) Bear in mind that this song is an odd choice to cover today, as the brevity of “I Know” makes more sense in its context as the album’s only real breather (Ventura accentuates this by dropping out of the track for large swathes at a time). What is here is very good, but what surrounds it can be phenomenal.
[8]

Will Adams: “Let’s do everything,” says Cassie, and proceeds to do nothing.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Apparently you don’t. This barely-there afterthought of a song isn’t anything close to what I want.
[4]