The Singles Jukebox

Followiing up the year’s most surpriisiing No. 1 hiit…

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Adaora Ede: In our occasional bonding moments, my younger brother and I like to turn on a bit of Kanye. TLOP was our soundtrack of choice one recent summer afternoon. In the midst of Kanye’s spit fire verses in the intro, I paused the track and stated “Wait, wait, wait, this beat sounds a whole lot like Broads in Atlanta!” All my brother had to say to this was “I wonder why.” Somewhere around the the first BRRRRRRAH and GITGITGIT I realized how out of touch I truly was. I’m gonna owe a lot of this to Desiigner’s ability to grow out of the Fake Future interpolation label and eclipse the popularity of the song that put him on in the first place. The Future x Desiigner parallels are still a bit lost on me, because even the most numbing “Panda” relies on an intricacy never-before-heard in Future’s detached flow. And so the pattern continues on “Tiimmy Turner,” where Desiigner drags along about everything from xannies to BET to 9mms on a beat that I like to imagine was sampled from both a haunted house soundtrack and Gregorian chant songbook. Witch hop + that synth rock outro: Kanye wishes.
[8]

Alfred Soto: My students love Desiigner — why hadn’t anyone else stumbled on splicing Future and Drake for a Fisher-Price version of hedonism? The helium balloon sample and the mumbled affection he injects into the title hook compensate for braindead rhymes. Also, I’m not sure my students will love this more than “Panda.”
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: Desiigner fascinates me — someone who sounds like Future and becomes more popular than Future ever was for weeks at a time, while displaying an infectious persona of his own making. It’s only fitting that Desiigner would call his next post-“Panda” single “Tiimmy Turner,” as the rapper’s very existence is so exaggerated and cartoonish he would be right at home on the Fairly OddParents. (In fact, the way he performs bears a striking resemblance to Denzel Crocker’s unpredictable spasms.) The dramatic, gothic Mike Dean production almost seems to poke fun at Desiigner’s tics and image, especially with the entirely unnecessary reharmonization at the outro. Perhaps they were going for something stirring with that ending, but when coupled with the nursery-rhyme melody, it sounds campy and tongue-in-cheek. That said, as long as the next song isn’t a collaboration with AJR, Desiigner remains an intriguing force as he continues developing his own sound, as opposed to taking off someone else’s.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: Like Travis Scott before him, Desiigner entertains tragedy secondhand. His words dance around the experience of pain, not yet fully capable of grappling with it directly. And when he starts to open up, he once again recalls Future, this time the confessions of “Codeine Crazy.” Good hook, but he’s got a ways to go. Mike Dean’s synth noodles aren’t helping either.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: I wasn’t impressed by “Panda,” and “Tiimmy Turner” doesn’t change my opinion of Desiigner one iota. Auto-Tune me to hell.
[1]

Natasha Genet Avery: Desiigner has yet to establish himself as a skillful rapper, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Mike Dean has created one of the most complex, haunting sonic landscapes of 2016 — a true maximalist triumph evoking his work with Kanye. Each listen bears fruit, highlighting a different snarl, a moment of syncopation, or a particularly gnarly bar of sub-bass. And in a move that suggests incredible self-awareness, Desiigner doesn’t try to match the ambition of the track and sticks to a simple-yet-dark nursery rhyme that accentuates Mike Dean’s machinations. This was easily an [8] even before “Tiimmy Turner” goes major and Desiigner floats over a Ratatat-esque outro. If anything is to save him from being penned as a bargain-bin Future, it’s his excellent taste.
[9]

Katie Gill: It’s better than “Panda” and the ending is surprisingly captivating, but that’s 100% me damning with faint praise. Personally, I can’t wait for his follow-up “Tommy Pickles.”
[4]

Lilly Gray: There is a certain kind of song, like “Rocky Raccoon” (bad example, bad example, bear with me), where the name is both the subject of a story and, when repeated, a stand-in or evocation of everything the story stands for. It’s singsong and sticky and in this case, circles around the spooky ghostscape of the craggy backtrack, complete with jump-scare snarls over the tinny organ. “Bloody Mary” might be a better example, then, if we’re talking addictive thrills and chills — which is exactly what Desiigner delivers.
[8]

Brad Shoup: In my industry, they call them HPLEs: High Potential, Low Experience. They haven’t cut their teeth, but they’re hungry and sharp. What’s nice about HPLEs — from a management perspective — is that they’re eager to smash the work you assign them for a good while. Famously, Desiigner broke using Future’s melodicism: it was eerie, it was kinda funny, and maybe he could’ve hit the Hot 100 with a couple similar stabs. But Future’s not just about the voice, of course: there’s that grown sensibility that outside the house, outside the car, everything’s crashing down. “Panda” forged the weight of the clauses and the gruff vocal scrambling, but Desiigner was in love with the pure sound of things. So why bother to fake experience? “Tiimmy Turner” has the obsessive gloom of an Old Weird American folk song (which… probably moved major units), where the melodic bob of his line endings rhymes as much as anything. The “Panda” ad-libs are crushed flat under their weight; the tale is ridiculous only if you imagine it’s his. Recognizing the gothic freeze of Kanye’s refined approach to Auto Tune, the ageless Mike Dean sends a bassline to shadow his charge, and, in the last minute, cracks the studio door. The ad-libs fly out, the Coolio synthwhine is modified for bass and drawn longer, the piano steps out like a Saint Pablo tour setpiece. The devil-dealing lyric diverges from the track, and in the gap is… whatever you want, I guess. 
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