The Singles Jukebox

True fact: this probably would have scored a full five points higher had it been called “Nooted”…

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[3.57]

Stephen Eisermann: The best part about a song shouldn’t be the visit to Urban Dictionary it requires, yet here we are.
[1]

Andy Hutchins: I have years-old Becky G stock that I’m not cashing until her inevitable colossal U.S. hit drops, even though she’s an unqualified success in the Latin(x?) pop market. “Zooted” has its charms, but mostly means I can keep holding: Becky’s got a perfunctory motormouthed verse and a suitably opaque hook for this, and Farruko actually understands how to coil around and overpower the killer spiky synth that everything revolves around, but French is still 0-fer on his career when it comes to genuinely good rap verses, and even getting him on what should be his wheelhouse — a turn-up joint about getting obliterated on every substance in sight — can’t stop him from whiffing by phoning in a droning feature. He’s the guy who calls when he needs a hit, not the guy you call when you need one — musically, at least.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Let me put something in perspective. I’ve been listening to French Montana since my early teens. That’s half my life. I have a baby sister who is about as old as French Montana’s musical career. French Montana has essentially rapped long enough that if someone were to tell me “French Montana is washed,” my immediate response is: No shit he’s washed, the man’s musical career spans a decade and a half. Now, in spite of being that far from his prime or the cutting edge of being “cool” and “in the now,” French Montana has never said the phrase “zooted” in his raps that I’ve ever heard, because that is the kind of phrase that someone waaaay older than him would spout. And that’s what Becky G, a pop star who’s aimed AT my baby sister’s generation, is trying to say to sound cool. It doesn’t matter that the production here is a bit dully functional, just this one linchpin phrase has pierced this thing like an inner tube and deflated the whole debacle.
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Nortey Dowuona: Soft, clicking drums circle the stabbing synth bleeps then drop out as lush synth waves wash over the proceedings, which Becky G surfs dispassionately as French Montana drifts by, then dives in as bass drums rumble through Farruko’s sharp, rapid fire jet ski.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There’s a long and storied history of pop-rap songs with absolutely hideous synth riffs, but in most of those songs, the ugliness of the loop is used as either counterpoint or intensifier for the performers — watch T.I dance over DJ Toomp’s imperial horns, or be witness to Waka Flocka Flame clashing with Lex Luger’s synths. Here, Tainy & Supa Dups’s beat (which just sounds like the Great Value version of “Mi Gente” anyways) serves as neither, swallowing up the three vocalists here in short order.
[4]

Will Adams: In a way, the dissonance between the lyrics — turned up, going all night, raging — and the music — a sleepier rendition of the squiggly “Mi Gente” hook — is more faithful to a common party experience: feeling like you’re lit when, really, your eyes are drooping and you’re exhausted and it’s 2:43am and you’ve been nursing a now-room temperature Bud Light for a full two hours. But when the track covers the laid-back, half-awake angle, the vocalists need to compensate with energy. Of the involved, only Becky G and Farruko are up to this task, but in such a collab-driven market, two out of three is a decent average.
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Rather than a “featuring,” each artist seems to be in their own song — it is only Becky G’s chorus that connects. The drop is quiet and loses all of its impact because it is repeated throughout the whole song. I just hope Becky G goes back to reggaeton soon. 
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