The Singles Jukebox

When Dr. Dre stopped returning his calls, Jayceon had to find some new friends…

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[5.38]

Andy Hutchins: Forget the asinine decision to have Lil Wayne just inhabit the hook on this one, or the fact that Game outdoes Tyler on his own schlock-shock schtick (“Swag, now watch him cook” > syntax-warping bars and LeBron’s hairline jokes); or the idea that Jayceon can just say “Fuck it, then I’ma Crip, too” and have everything be okay one song before “Red Nation” on The R.E.D. Album. 1500 Or Nothin’ somehow both approximated Dr. Dre G-funk and updated it, made a possible first single from Detox, and gave it to Game.
[6]

John Seroff: Here’s Tyler trying to sound all grown up and hard and here’s Game trying his best to be sixteen again, shouting out Jack Sparrow, Harry Potter, Blanka and that famous DC Comics superhero Captain America. I love that the references to Rihanna, Lil B and Snoop place them all in roughly the same mythological pantheon. The beat isn’t Dre but it might as well be; Wayne is “featured” but he might as well not be. There’s a sense of everybody having a good time.  Sometimes, for all its posturing, hip hop is just really cute. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: Get a room, guys.
[6]

Anthony Easton: “An unemployment line of cocaine” is worth at least 6 points, a casual homophobia that both encompasses and mocks the log cabin Republican is clever enough, sucking that pussy like it is wonton soup, works as well. I mean, it’s really smart, really tight, and  those three examples are proof that Tyler can write, but it still hates fags and women, and I am sick of queerness being written about instead of being embodied.
[4]

Zach Lyon: Tyler is on auto-pilot and Wayne is pointless; the big deal here is just how sad it makes me listening to Game trying to fit in with the Odd Future crew. He tries to emulate Tyler by emulating ’99 Mathers, posturing himself as an official hater of the pop culture surrounding him. But he doesn’t even seem to realize how loaded it is to rap about physically assaulting Rihanna — or he isn’t man enough to use a less fucked up example of a female pop star for his personal interpretation of the second verse of “The Real Slim Shady” — or he isn’t boy enough to actually follow through with the massive offensiveness he merely mentions. And filling a verse with proper nouns (“Maybe Jack Sparrow/maybe Peter Pan’s nemesis”? Really, with that?) does not make the verse worthwhile. 
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: Between these two collaborators (Wayne barely shows up) stands an entire generation of Los Angeles hip-hop, but Game proves to be just as adept at conforming to Tyler’s Tumblr-age brattiness as he has been at exhuming Dre and Cube’s Compton thuggery. That’s unexpected, but it should not be a surprise; one of his genuine talents has always been his chameleonic ability to inhabit the styles of his betters. Game’s other great talent, which also puts him in good stead for an OF hook-up, is his inability to self-censor. He treats beef with other rappers the way the superstates of George Orwell’s 1984 treat war. So on “Martins vs. Goblins,” Game simply reinvents a favored tactic, the one where he launches petulant barbs and acts like he’s the real victim. His threat against domestic violence victim Rihanna is ostentatiously and insincerely misanthropic — in other words, a piece of theatre — and it’s followed by an arbitrary, hilarious shot at one of Tyler’s buddies: “Tie Lil B up to a full tank of propane — SWAG — now watch him cook.” Few performers are able to disguise neediness so poorly; two verses later, Game’s craven enough to give the Based God a shout out anyway. Tyler’s greatest contribution is the new context he offers the headliner, but he’s still snotty enough to enunciate an oft-made critique of his host: “That shit was expected like Jayceon whenever he name drops.” The whole thing is arbitrarily anti-social, which undercuts any bite it might have had. All that’s left behind is a slick residue of sly humor.
[9]

Michaela Drapes: A diss track by kids who’ve read too many comic books and watched too many Eli Roth movies. Unfortunately, I’m not offended, shocked or otherwise entertained. Though, good to know Weezy’s a Martian. That explains a lot.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Really wish Weezy had gotten more than the chorus line, not least because his cheerful deliria might show up the two perpetual adolescents for the self-congratulatory parent-baiting children they are.
[5]