The Singles Jukebox

Return of the pastel poobah…

[Video][Myspace]
[4.55]

Doug Robertson: The last time I heard someone do the lyric “Milk/Milk/Lemonade/Round the corner fudge is made”, it was The Krankies, and even though it was being said by a sixty year old woman dressed as a schoolboy, it still seemed less wrong than it does in this context. I need a shower, and not the kind that’s being alluded to here.
[2]

Chuck Eddy: Maybe the first song in history to work in the immortal grade-school grossout chant, and notable for that alone. Less notable for the Soulja Boy “youuuu” stuff, and way less notable for “I’ll have you squirtin’ for certain” — I’m already boycotting by principle every song where a circle-jerking rap or r&b nincompoop promises to “make it rain” (started with “skeet,” right?); hard to imagine anything more clinical and unsexy to brag about. Still, “Cookies-N-Apple Juice” feels spirited, if rather blurry. And the (apparently just leaked) “Silky (No Homo)” track it segues into in the video is real fun — a way-bouncy rip of Steppenwolf (“Sookie Sookie”) via Fern Kinney (“Groove Me”) that comes across like a funked-up toga party. I’d give that song an 8; this one just gets a…
[6]

Martin Kavka: What am I supposed to make of “I’ll have you squirtin’ for certain / yeah, bring a diaper”? Am I supposed to be impressed by the rhyme structure? And also by the sexual prowess to which this refers? Am I supposed to laugh? Am I supposed to have my horizons for possible fetishes broadened? I have no idea. Still, the diaper move seems a bit rude. Hasn’t Cam’ron heard Kiss’s “Lick It Up”?
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: Oooh — a chorus that’s a Soulja Boy dis. Maybe I shouldn’t find this even interesting, but it’s so funny I don’t care.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: You wouldn’t know it from this song, but Crime Pays is actually a satisfyingly coherent return to form. “Cookies-N-Apple Juice” is another story: Cam sounds more animated than he has for quite some years, but there is absolutely no way I can endorse a song with a hook like “Milk, milk, lemonade/Round the corner, fudge made.” Skip this and head straight to the Rust Belt murk of “Get It in Ohio” if you want to feel like Killa is back.
[3]

Jordan Sargent: As a kowtow to Southern rap this is way less embarrassing than things that Fat Joe has attempted to pull off, but ultimately it’s beyond unnecessary.
[5]

Hillary Brown: I wouldn’t say Cam’ron’s effort in the field raises the last successful minimalist rap single to the level of literature, but if “Cookies-N-Apple Juice” is the scrawlings of a Benjy-type illiterate, GS Boyz are up around the Tim LaHaye plateau.
[1]

Rodney J. Greene: Disappointingly not about giving blood. Cam tries the old ploy of counterbalancing his misogyny with a female rapper talking nasty right back at him, but it doesn’t work because her filth isn’t nearly as imaginative as his.
[6]

Erick Bieritz: Congratulations Rowdy Roddy Piper, you are now a verb. In the burgeoning genre of apple juice rap, the hook here compares unfavorably to Keri Hilson’s “Henny & Apple Juice.” Extract the 50 first seconds of Cam weirdness and trash the rest.
[5]

Additional Scores

Matt Cibula: [3]
Martin Skidmore: [6]