These people may be feeling themselves, but are we feeling them?

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[2.85]

Crystal Leww: Everyone here does feel like they are feeling themselves, entirely to a pigheaded fault. All the artists on this song, with the exception of French Montana, have slowly eroded their good will throughout the years, and even he is going to lose his if he keeps dropping straight references to songs that are over a year old. The fact that he has the least offensive part of this song is a real testament to how fucking terrible the others have gotten. Miley is still equating basic ass shaking to twerking. Wiz Khalifa has Jay Z’d getting high and taking shots in the sense that all his verses sound like an old man dialed them in. Worst of all is will.i.am, with too many terrible lines to list here but in particular the one where he actually says “she give me IQ / that mean she give me head” (with Miley Cyrus harmonizing). I have never been sadder to hear “mussardonthebeat ho” on a song.
[1]

Iain Mew: Between this and “Timber”, there seems to be a horrible push in pop right now to make the word association of “Miley Cyrus” and “twerking” even stronger. However, the deployment of Miley as voice activated plug-in in “Feelin’ Myself” at least suggests a sense of humour that’s sorely missed elsewhere.
[3]

David Sheffieck: Somehow manages to make a theoretical star-filled jam track sound completely anonymous, like DJ Mustard’s usual rack of interchangeable plugins just added a few more to the track. Montana quoting “Fuckin’ Problems” in this mess is easily the worse misstep, though, calling to mind a track that handled this type of jam infinitely better in every way.
[0]

Alfred Soto: I like the beat! Why these second raters and assholes thought writing Miley Cyrus lines designed to punish her for twerking — and why Cyrus accepted this script — is a mystery less potent than the possibility that carbon-based women would give any of them head. I mean, they’re sucking each other off already. 
[1]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: In the future, B.o.B will be remembered as a pioneer for cornballs over DJ Mustard beats. Until then, Miley and Will tip their caps in his direction over this piece of peak digital Dijon. The Cyrus/Will union is a tourist bonanza, from the club to the bedroom to the pirate ship (leased for a whole weekend from Macklemore). It sounds awkward, unsteadily tipping into caricature, both artists’ sophomoric humour needed and promptly denied. They figure themselves the shit in front of the mirror; Montana figures himself like Slick Rick, a well-needed side eye directed at corny hosts.
[4]

Megan Harrington: This is the sonic equivalent of thinking your waitress is flirting with you. Miley Cyrus is here because she owes everyone in her industry a favor, French and Wiz have no professional dignity and aspire only to the gold standard, will.i.am is simply oblivious to reality — I can accept each of these rationales, but from conception to completion, was there really no one willing to criticize this? Here’s one for free, with love: If you want to play on IQ and oral sex, the slang is “brain.” It even extends the beats/bread alliteration of the following line.  
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: If one were to pretend the five major players on this song were an NBA starting line-up, they would neither be a flat-out horrible, lottery-pick-bound squad nor underachieving all-stars. Team “Feelin’ Myself” is a weird ensemble that sorta makes sense on paper but is an absolute train wreck come game time. French Montana and Wiz Khalifa are mediocre role-players who bring exactly what you expect (shrug-worthy existence and weed talk, respectively). DJ Mustard is the young gun doing the best he can, but secretly eyeing the exits. Miley Cyrus is a bizarre parody of herself, kinda like Dennis Rodman circa now. And will.i.am, dear goodness will.i.am. He’s the number-three guy who thinks he’s the star, all bravado and misplaced confidence. Dude gets to the chorus and he does Rap Genius’ job for them. An entertaining mess that’s still not League-Pass worthy.
[1]

Brad Shoup: This one wants for explosion. I dunno what’s the deal with will.i.am insisting on keeping it in second gear for the entire song; at no point does this ever bang. I mean, some of that’s on DJ Mustard — the only notable touch is the plump synthbass scales — but would you give ’10s will.i.am. your #fire? Especially when he’s just going to recast the Peas?
[4]

Tara Hillegeist: Tries for the same unstoppable, insensible purity of last week’s Canuco Zumby track and misses completely on the unfortunate fact of everyone’s professional competence; what should be exuberant amateurism bloviates instead, the perfunctory gesture of the adequately talented. By god, what a sleek beat underlying it all, though. You could throw the filthiest, most violent bars over that ripped belly and it’d still sound like smearing chiseled perfection with shit on silk. Instead we get comfort rap that hangs sloppy. I’m insulted on DJ Mustard’s behalf. Maybe I shouldn’t be: despite the massed masticators of musical malapropism stinking up this cut, the mixing knows who the real star here is, and keeps them entirely out of the beat’s way for the duration, the better for a laptop artist to rip away and play without an audience noticing, at one of those seven-figures-strong gigs a song like this will always play to best.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: Bad day to be French Montana or Wiz Khalifa; the two guys here who have some modicum of rapping ability reveal themselves to be so uninspiring that they’re overshadowed by will.i.am pretending to be a pirate and Miley Cyrus acting like we might have forgotten that she likes to try to twerk. Also a bad day to be me, honestly: I should be used to will.i.am making catchy tunes with the stupidest fucking lyrics a legally responsible adult can put to paper (“Fergalicious,” “Boom Boom Pow”). I should be used to his conviction that pop and scatology are natural bedfellows. I should absolutely not have been unprepared for how many mindblowingly god-awful lines he could cram into his verses. I should not have let DJ Mustard do this to me. I should not have let me do to this to myself. I feel like Anthony Weiner post-Carlos Danger.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: He still comes with a lot of nonsense. In this case – and hardly for the first time – there’s a whole song’s worth. The central assuredness is great as a participatory thing, but everything else is an irrelevance at best, on one occasion (“sewer side”) even overstepping the mark in its quest for gibberish. He’d struggle not to get a hit right now, certainly not with DJ Mustard’s lo-fi work here, but what he’s made of it is no proof he’s the innovator he thinks he is.
[6]

Will Adams: It’s only appropriate that it’s so masturbatory. Not just because of the title; it’s because everyone involved has, to a varying degree, become self-satisfied automatons who just spit out what their code tells them to do. DJ Mustard rolls out an interesting bass lick but does nothing with it. French Montana and Wiz Khalifa spit out nothing verses that solidify their statuses as colorless, interchangeable guests. Miley Cyrus says “twerk” a few times and that’s it. But last and always least is will.i.am, an artist who has managed the rare feat of letting his inflated ego manifest in every possible place — from serving the same damn lyrics for seven years to the reverb that’s supposed to make him a giant on the word “iris.” I don’t doubt that any of these people are feeling themselves; they’re just too engrossed by the mirror to notice anything around them.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Said the mirror: “Goddamnit.”
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