The Singles Jukebox

YouTube: “I’m from Sweden and this hits harder then our meatballs!”

[Video]
[6.30]

Alfred Soto: Reaching a new peak of #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 with no signs of stopping, “Big Dawgs” is one of the more traditional hip-hop tracks to score. This Indian producer-writer team has got “money on my mind,” a trope no less tiresome for sounding fresh in its secondhandedness: Kalmi and Hanumankind after all absorbed these tropes as kids. Energy and skill it’s got, if not much inspiration.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: In 2024, Texas rap no longer requires Texan rappers. Hanumankind claims a “Southern family” in “Big Dawgs,” which checks out: he’s from the south Indian state of Kerala, and spent some time in Houston. He has a slick, bumptious flow, and he’s versatile enough to quote Pimp C before switching up into a Project Pat cadence for a few bars. It would work better if he wasn’t playing Rap-a-Lot Mad Libs with his rhymes: he’s standing on business, he’s got money on his mind, he would like hoes to get up off his dick. The beat rumbles like a dirt bike, except it also buzzes like a mosquito, and the longer it goes on the more like the latter it sounds. I like how he says he’s rolling through the city with his lawyer with him; it makes him sound like Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas careening through the streets with a dubiously identified attorney as sidekick.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The kind of rap hit only a Goldman Sachs analyst could write — every second optimized for hookiness, every boast a little self-satisfied and unearned. The Project Pat and Pimp C bites are cute, and I don’t doubt this guy was listening to UGK as a teenager, but the aggregate effect of this (and Kalmi’s big, aggro beat) is less to thrill and more to annoy. With every listen I find something new to dislike.
[3]

Katherine St. Asaph: This is so fucking stupid.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: Maybe it’s the suppressed debate-club nerd in me, but I appreciate how much of “Big Dawgs” is constructed as an argument for its own right to exist. The guy clearly wanted to do a straightforward Project Pat imitation — no reason, just ’cause — but he knew this would ruffle feathers, so he spends most of the song’s back half pre-addressing the controversy, inhabiting the guise of his soon-to-be critics: “how you get like this?” His answers range from standard brush-offs to some genuinely provoking commentary, most notably his suggestion that those of brown skin color “face closed curtains” worldwide. Knock him if you must for jacking the Memphis flow, but Cherukat did at least grow up in Houston, that sprawling sweatbox of contrasts — a global magnet for high-skilled immigration whose suburbs can nonetheless foster protests against a Hindu temple’s new Hanuman statue. Lest you wander too far intto the political weeds and end up thinking “promises are broken” is a veiled reference to H-1B visa caps, Hanumankind brings things back to the carnal with a well-timed sexual boast, a head-spinning turnaround that helps ward off any party-unfriendly grievance wallowing. The spiky defensiveness ends up working in the song’s favor; both lyrics and delivery act out the kind of immigrant hustle that was valorized in M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” the most recent South Asian crossover hit of this magnitude. Confident that his points have been made, Hanumankind signs off with a lengthy chop-and-screw session that’s indulgent in the best of ways, bolstering the song’s “anything goes” sense of slippery self-assurance. He ain’t worried about it, so why should we be?
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: “In school, I used to fight the bullies — now I’m fighting with the law. Guess some things don’t leave you fully.”
[10]

Mark Sinker: The wind and grind of the backing is good, but he should half-speed his voice all the time; au naturel it’s too weedy. “We ain’t got the time for you fuckin’ bugs” is a strong near-closer of a line — except he actually just says “bums,” and that’s weedy too. 
[5]

Kristen S. Hé: No idea why people are calling this TikTok rap when it’s clearly pro wrestling entrance theme music — but for whom?
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I look forward to hearing 20 seconds of this accompanying a montage of some contact sport as I channel-surf. The cool bit is the whir and grind under the verses, like an ’80s home computer trying to sound like a car engine. The slowed-down finale breaks up the monotony a bit, and the kids listening to it don’t realise that trick is about 35 years old because they’re half that.
[5]

Ian Mathers: How you feel about him yelling “hey, shut the fuck up!” at the standard “don’t imitate these stunts” warning at the beginning of the video is probably a good shorthand for how you’ll feel about “Big Dawgs” as a whole. The production is nicely blocky, buzzy, and abrasive, and the flow follows suit. It feels likely to be divisive, in the kind of way where both sides go “see?” and point to the same lines/elements to prove their point. Those stunts, though… those stunts are pretty cool to watch. Maybe that’s a good shorthand too.
[7]