AMNESTY WEEK 2K10: E-40 ft. Too $hort – Bitch
Which reminds me that I have a Keak da Sneak album I really ought to listen to at some point…
[Video][Myspace]
[5.86]
Alex Macpherson: More laid-back than my favourite cuts from the almost overwhelmingly consistent Revenue Retrievin’ double-disc package, but no less irresistible for it. The synth riff struts, bounces, winks, too good-humoured for “Bitch”s impolitic sentiments to matter; and a masterful E-40 verse forms the song’s centrepiece, starting off pitter-pattering through tonguetwisters with ease, ending with volleys of pronouns that reify exactly where everyone stands (E-40, of course, being in charge).
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: Misogyny is only excusable if you do something fresh with it. Unless the joke is supposed to be that it’s a rake scene, just going on forever, I don’t hear one.
[4]
Chuck Eddy: Silly, catchy, intermittently tongue-twisting, with warm summer-soul hooks and man-to-man love-and-life lessons that repurpose an expletive in ways that aren’t remotely clever, but with too much spirit to quibble. The “female puppies” line (only half accurate) makes me grin every time. My main complaint is, sorry, sometimes guys sit on the toilet to piss so they can read a damn book.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: All bitches are not women. Some men are like bitches. E-40 and Too Short will never be bitches. Using logical reasoning, would women like E-40 and Too Short?
[1]
Martin Skidmore: I’ve always liked E-40 — he’s an immensely nimble rapper, and several of his lines here are a total delight. Too Short does okay, and there’s a good hook sung by someone. I can’t really get behind the sentiments, but I like the sound and the flow a great deal.
[7]
John Seroff: Buoyed by a beat reminiscent of Dr. Dre at his peak, “Bitch” is unapologetically grimy and swaggerish in that 1993 mode. Too Short’s pinched, strutting verse is plenty sharp but it’s E-40 who steals the show. 40’s bars are a wild batch of ever-shifting gears and froggy whirlwind rhymes, words bubbling up like boiling molasses. This is THE de facto pimp walk theme for my foreseeable future.
[8]
Zach Lyon: Man, this song would be really perfect if all the words were different.
[6]
OK, who submitted this? Cuz I didn’t, and we’ve done John S’s amnesty pick already, and ours were the highest marks. What is the point of submitting an amnesty track if you don’t want to rep for it? Seeing Jukeboxers getting to enthuse about what they REALLY loved this year is the best thing about amnesty week.
i’d guess al?
I confess. It was me.
those are some bad reviews. it’s always frustrating when a critic is only focusing on lyrics; not mentioning the music at all.
See, I’ve built up tolerance — you pretty much have to — but there’s a certain point where lyrics reach misogyny critical mass. This happened to reach it right before the bridge, where the sheer force of it all became so ridiculous that it overshadowed everything else. It’d be OK if it was fresh, like Jonathan said, but it’s the same “women are bitches, bitches are bad, stay away from those bitches, damn good thing we aren’t bitches, right?” that I could get just as easily on, I dunno, Reddit or someplace.
If the lyrics had given me a chance to think about the music, I might have been more sympathetic. As it was, I was over it by the first chorus.