The Singles Jukebox

Cancel culture is cancelled

[Video]
[5.89]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Imagine, like, Beauty and the Beast, but they live in a trap house instead of a castle, and Belle is really, really thicccccc. 
[5]

Katie Gill: This song pretty much entirely hangs on that “if you can see it from the front, wait till you see it from the back” line and honestly, it’s such of an earworm of a line that it justifies a solid chunk of the views for this otherwise middle of the album song. I’m not sure if it justifies the feature credit. Tyga’s just happy to be here, y’all.
[6]

Tim de Reuse: Okay, that part about “wait ’till you see it from the back-back-back-back-back” and all that? That’s pretty great, actually. I can see that getting caught in my head. Solid stuff. The rest is also there, I guess, if you want to listen to that.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Doja Cat’s best single, hands down. The plinking synth melodies are constantly in motion, precious and twinkly but grounded by a booming low end. Their mesmerizing, cyclical nature is mirrored by Doja’s nimble handling of the topline: she switches between lines that firmly end with a single word, and those that are accompanied by ad-libs or tasteful repetition. While she aims for a more self-assured tone in the bridge, most of the song finds her opting for a more conversational style of vocalizing. She doesn’t quite whisper the main hook, but it’s delivered with the same knowing sensuality.
[8]

Oliver Maier: Doja is not an exceptional rapper or singer but she plays both roles which such humour and panache that I find her hard to resist, particularly on recent singles. Her yowling ad-libs and ability to make catchy melodies catchier with her odd affectations call Young Thug to mind, and she fits just as well over the sparkling xylophone loops here as she did over the cartoonish stomp of “Tia Tamera”. Tyga is predictably sleazy on the pointless remix, but not disastrous. More like this please, ideally minus Dr. Luke.
[8]

Will Rivitz: Doja Cat absolutely flies over this one, pinballing between genuine hilarity (“How long it take to pull my pants up” is an incredible image) and swaggering confidence with aplomb, over a beat that splits the difference between Mustard and Moving Castle. Tyga, as per his wont, does the remix no favors.
[6]

Stephen Eisermann: Never has Nicki’s influence felt this prominent, but man if I can’t imagine a (better) version performed by Miss Minaj. Equally boring, certainly, just a more theatrical version.
[3]

Kylo Nocom: I really like Doja Cat’s hyper-sexual bubblegum R&B/rap more consistently as an aesthetic idea than in execution: “Go to Town” was amazing and works as better Instagram-caption-bait than any Lizzo song, but “MOOO!” was an unfunny drawn-out shitpost and “Tia Tamera” got annoying quickly with its ey-uhhhh rhyme scheme. “Juicy” was always going to get promo, and I had to endure her COLORS show throughout this summer thanks to my sisters, but any remix of this would have fucked it over, no matter the guest. The music box melodies managed to provide ample room for Doja Cat to flex her own quirks over the course of the original song, no matter how dead-eyed it felt. Though some portions–that bridge cannot be fixed, no matter what–felt awkward, it was all in service of Doja trying to prove her own starpower. Adding another person to the mix removes the satisfaction of the dynamic explored in her second verse, leaving her so little to pick up after. Adding Tyga, of all people, just seems cruel and unusual, like they were trying to figure out how to make this new version as sedated and uncomfortable as possible; letting him talk about how it’s “tighter than a virgin, like Madonna say” is a crime against humanity.
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Doja Cat is nothing if not persistent. For the past year and a half, the L.A. rapper/singer/producer has been a regularly scheduled fixture in the pop conversation: in March 2018, she released her debut album Amala, which positioned her as a true crossover star: an R&B vocalist with the easy charisma of 2 Chainz and the sonic tastes of a Fader article come to life. Predictably, it didn’t sell very well. So in August of that year we got “Mooo!,” which wasn’t very good but was incredibly fun and popular, and was probably like 5% responsible for “Old Town Road,” so overall a positive for humanity. But the memetic popularity of “Mooo!” didn’t make Doja Cat into an overnight sensation, and so 6 months later we got “Tia Tamera,” which once again reframe Doja as a perfect foil to Rico Nasty. 6 months after that and here we are with “Juicy,” the sixth single off a middling pop-rap album that came out in spring 2018. Also, Tyga’s here for some reason. But despite the generally extraneous feeling that “Juicy” carries, Doja Cat can’t help but charm. The song’s the kind of earworm that’s so catchy that it’s hard to even identify one coherent, capital-“H” Hook– it’s really just Doja bouncing lyrical and melodic ideas over a faintly Wii-shop-channel-music-type-beat, with a short interlude of Tyga to show you how much worse you can have it. Sign me up for another one in six months, I guess!
[8]