Accidentally read it as Post-Mahone.

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[3.14]

Iain Mew: He’s got the woozy distance to singing and production just right to fit in with the last couple of years, but the idea of pairing it with basketball-themed bragging rather than anything more deeply emotional is an odd one. Perhaps it’s meant to indicate that he’s effortlessly above it all, but as an introduction to a newcomer that’s a very difficult space to make work for you. Without already being bought in, I just find it a bit sleepy.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Apparently Speaker Knockerz died for our sins, yet we still express a desire to raise up bird-shit singles like this. “Post Racial Malone” is not particularly good at rapping, but given how devoid of percussion this FKi production is, its impossible to tell, and that’s the point. Whereas your Chief Keefs and Young Thugs took autotuned freefall in melody as a way of branching out and breaking down the walls so they could come up with new ideas, or your Futures attempted to rework the potential for trad songwriting in this supposedly non-musical form, we instead are presented with another further descent of modern blackface tied into rote cliches of bars by a kid who just wants to be famous and probably started rapping last year. The worst aspect is that like so many viral cracker rappers who are in the media strictly to be an eyesore, we have given this parasite a platform rather than promote further the art by the innovators, and somehow this has assisted a truly toothless single into transcending its degenerate quality and thriving at the expense of the genre he plunders and savages.
[1]

Alfred Soto: aaaannnd the Drake influence washes up on the shores of Dover.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I guess this is nominally hip-hop because Post Malone is rapping (albeit laconically), but in terms of feel it’s got much more in common with, I dunno, Portishead, if Geoff Barrow mixed a chopped & screwed trap beat in with his tracks. Lots of references to NBA players amidst an almost ambient backing (plus the sloooow beat)? This is one of the odder, more unexpected singles I’ve heard this year.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m trying really hard to come up with ways to say “fuck this shit” that don’t come down to racial, class, or gender essentialism. Male sensitivity, after all, isn’t a bad thing in itself (although the narcissism which pretty much always goes hand in hand with the self-conscious performance of sensitivity is), and while there are good sociohistorical reasons for the mumbled vulnerability of Drake or Future to be considered important, I don’t hold any political positions which would militate against white guys from hoeing the same row, at least in theory, aside from the general principle of NAGL. But really, it just comes down to my automatic older-brother shudder at the sound of whining. Fuck this shit.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Malone probably thinks he’s being very clever by taking the sound of a drugged-out internal monologue and turning it into a series of washed-out b-ball brags. For about 25 seconds, he’s right, but those 25 seconds are at the end when he just goes “oooh” over some distant piano. Someone needs to finance a wide-reaching public service announcement advising would-bes that miserable music about being great has reached its quota for the century already and please stop now.
[3]

Crystal Leww: Fuck this rich, white Grapevine kid trying to pass for a real Dallas rapper, and go listen to A.Dd+ instead.
[0]