The Singles Jukebox

Our ratings guide is writing itself…

[Video][Website]
[5.57]

Jessica Doyle: What does a K-pop idol group do after bringing upon themselves one round of bad publicity that sidelines them for eight months, and then having to sue their management company for back pay and losing the lawsuit? Sign with another company and come storming out of the gate, that’s what. Without the backstory, the ripoffs of/homage to/satire of Big Bang, the distracting drum sample, and the spitting in the direction of flower boys would risk secondhand embarrassment. (I adore Infinite, but I try to imagine Infinite pulling this off and cringe.) Block B’s struggle to bring authenticity to the stage of M! Countdown continues for another day, now with an extra dose of swagger, fairly won.
[8]

W.B. Swygart: In which K-Pop gets its very own Sham 69. But not quite as fun, somehow.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: In the current content-hungry Super Pals era of hip-hop, August might as well be five years ago. Yet it is October, and a remarkable amount of blog-post mileage is being found in Kendrick Lamar’s “Control” verse. As the world holds its breath for Drizzy to shed his pyjamas and take the bait, South Korean rap circles are still buzzing from its influence. Directly inspired by Kendrick’s “Control” verse, the artist Swings kickstarted a flurry of diss records, and somewhere along the line Block B’s Zico was pulled into the palaver. On “Very Good”, he appears to take the bait. Pushing the jock jam soundtrack to the side, he puffs out his chest and peeps out in his best Grizzled Kendrick Voice: “How many fake MCs out there?! TURN UP!!!” It’s utterly phoney, like a titmouse playing at being a lion. As ridiculous as it is, Zico’s seemingly unscripted answer is the best moment of an otherwise crummy song and a fascinating wrinkle in the ongoing “Control” story.
[2]

Brad Shoup: I was gonna write this off as the contractual chest-pounding boy band song, but the more I listen to it, the more I hear Fall Out Boy. It’s partly glammy guitars, partly the vocals: Stump’s full spectrum laid out, from sandy to squeaky. While their yap will never be credible (not against those upstrokes, anyway), their commitment is.
[6]

Madeleine Lee: Block B are not groundbreakers and never have been. They’re too self-aware for that, more interested in talking about the present than looking to the future; the pop culture bingo of the MV is not an accident. They’re also too self-interested, with a chip on their collective shoulder bigger than Atlas’s and no real target besides everybody else. Zico sounds bold enough calling out fake MCs, but coming after this summer’s Kendrick-inspired K-hip hop naming and shaming their “flower boys” are little more than straw men. But this song is, on a meta level, about defying death, and it makes sense for them to make the most of their strength, which is not adjusting the thermostat but adapting to the climate. And luckily for their brand of rowdy bangers, right now the climate is friendly: idol rap is more brutal, more zany, and more stylized than ever, leaving Block B free to let fly with rock and red lipstick. Everyone’s in top form, from Kyung’s jump-rope flow to P.O’s mosh-ready grunt to Taeil hitting notes just because he can. The value is not in how far they can push it, but in how many things they can cram in at the same time while still weaving seamlessly from one to the next. And at this, they are very, very good.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Those pitch effects are frightening — very good indeed. As are the tempo and rhythm changes.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Aggro without being angry, stop-and-starting, speeding up beyond comprehension, and almost noisy. I am more excited by the theory of this than the practice. 
[5]