The Singles Jukebox

And finally, he says they don’t know, but who are “they?” Those stories and Andy Rooney, tonight on “60 Minutes.”

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Alfred Soto: Not a Kirsty MacColl cover, and not a Drake performance despite the vocal. Emoting atop a luscious arrangement of beat box, pops, and undulant electronica, the songwriter-producer carves no distinctive identity, but he honors the lyric by suggesting secrets he won’t tell.
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David Turner: “Know” is a perfect word. Not for its meaning, but that it is easily repeatable and makes for excellent fonder for a potential song hook. Rico Love, a been-around the-block-many-times songwriter, got success with this ode to late night creeping and breaking the rules of monogyny. Whether it’s the details of the secret vacas, the intimate bedroom details or the late song rap verse that I swore could’ve been Mase; it’s been a small jewel on rap/R&B radio for late evening drives back home. 
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: At this moment in time, rapper-turned-producer-singer-slash-rapper Rico Love lacks a real identity beyond being a performing producer. Even Mario Winans bothered to make a sadsack oeuvre! (Mario: if you’re reading this, we need that Hurt No More 2, like, yesterday.) What “They Don’t Know” has going for it is the confidence Love has in the strength of its craft: that “turn the lights on” ad-lib near the end reminds us that Love has made plenty of these for many others. He is a reliable gentleman for bedroom bravado sentiment. We’re in safe hands here.
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Patrick St. Michel: Gonna need to do better than off-brand Drake production to make me feel less skeeved out listening to this.
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Crystal Leww: This is the type of thing that I should gobble right up considering that I love so much out of this genre including Ty Dolla $ign and August Alsina, but “They Don’t Know” is somehow, unbelievably boring. I blame the hook. The verses are expected to drown and trudge along in the typical dude fashion, both complimentary in its “you deserve the rewards” and straight up cringe-worthy in its corny reduction of women to objects: “On your birthday I’m the one who saw your birthday suit.” But I expect a hell of a hook. I expect the moments that make me want to swoon anyway. That never comes.
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Brad Shoup: Think about what the song would sound like if Rico didn’t say the hook a zillion times. I think the theme of mystery — or intimacy, whatever — would come across better with just that next-room organ that nicks Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel”. Anyway, someone needs to write an All-Star Weekend song so filthy LeBron’ll think twice before putting it on Instragram.
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Katherine St Asaph: There are sly recurring hooks to “They Don’t Know,” keys and chorus, but they’re subliminal, smoked over by R&B atmospherics that map out empty rooms; the laughter only comes out when it’s allowed. Rico Love, as a performer, is pliant and nothing, but that’s the only reason this story works — no one’d believe any of this were he especially dynamic or papped. (But let’s be honest: they know. And they know they know.) Rico’s smug as hell, but he’s also talking directly to her, as a co-conspirator; either she’s as mercenary as he is — who’s got the most to risk from allowing pictures? The most to gain from smiling through pickup lines? — or she gets off on it. He doesn’t tell, because maybe he doesn’t really know; it’s all playful but hazy, as if you’ve slipped through their smoke ring to find it’s just as smoky on the inside.
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Anthony Easton: This text is so clean and commercial, a perfect example of the axiom about paying a hooker not to fuck you but to leave when you are done. The misogyny of that line, and the mechanics of control here, are so explicit. Rico owns this woman, owns what she can say, owns her body, and she becomes his. That this combines with notices of fancy cars, private planes, and other status symbols hardens this economic distinction. It is made even worse, because the only status symbol that he cannot flaunt is her. The absence of the wife’s voice just compounds all of the sleaze. Add to that the music’s glide of sociopathic vocals over an anhedonic bedrock of blankness. At least hookers have autonomy. 
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Megan Harrington: You wake up in the morning to find a message in your OK Cupid inbox. It’s from Rico Love and it reads, “Can’t stop looking at you think we have a lot in common. I’m looking for my Beyonce. How come girls who want their Jay Z would never think twice about a guy who looks like him? I’m handsome and a hustler but you gotta give me that home training if you want it. Hmu.” I don’t know Rico, at least your fedora looks jaunty? 
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