The Singles Jukebox

The Suite Life of Janelle and Jeezy…

[Video][Website]
[5.86]

Jonathan Bradley: Why has Jeezy seemed less essential the further he recedes from his “Young” days? Is it age: an older artist with less hunger, less energy, and less to say than on his early work? Have the times left him behind: a Bush-era supervillain snowman who, dislodged from the crack rap days and two presidential terms on from the recession he titled his third major label album for, simply no longer belongs in an Atlanta weirder and more fractured than at his creative zenith? “Sweet Life” sounds like much latter-day Jeezy — he’s no longer as steely or as charismatic as during his Thug Motivation days — yet in its oneiric prettiness, ably facilitated by a Janelle Monáe very much in her element, he’s wrought something warming and weary. “It could be the Pac in me,” he raps at one point, but he’s no longer larger than life; he’s receding into the background.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Of the holy trinity of Southern rappers from the late ’00s (which includes T.I. and Wayne), Jeezy has not only symbolically shed the youth in his name but done so for his music. “Sweet Life” relies on a rather tame Janelle Monáe hook and a subdued vibe provided by 1017 mainstay C4. The production choice itself is a bit odd, given Jeezy’s notoriously rocky history with 1017’s main artist, Gucci Mane. But in general the song represents Jeezy’s continuous desire to move into the conscious/political in a rather… blandified way. Jeezy has never hit the nerves of the systematic tensions of his community or reached the introspective depths of peers like Killer Mike or Starlito. Hell, even on a record of hedonism and insanity, he got outdone by a pre-memetic status Plies. All the same, as one of the few of the larger Southern rappers who appears to be recognizing that his music must enter an adulthood and a comfortable position, he’s worked hard to avoid sounding too dated.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Watching the video deepens the song, by itself a well-intentioned empowerment anthem with effective use of delay and echo.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Jeezy takes surprisingly well to C4’s suspended, drifty production, even if I could do with it being a bit less shapeless. Shame Janelle Monáe sings what’s functionally a Sia hook.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Jeezy takes nearly 30 seconds to prep for what sounds like a Coldplay production: lots of flutter and modest synth bass. Monáe plays against type with a lack of energy; Jeezy’s got enough but a lot of it is T.I.’s.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m always going to have some baseline affection for late-2000s hip-hop, because that’s when I started listening to the radio for new music again after a decade in the wilderness, and Jeezy (no longer Young; neither are any of us) is the most emblematic rapper of that period. If he never scaled the heights that (say) Lil Wayne or T.I. did, neither did he go as far off the rails as they managed to. Janelle Monáe puts in serviceable hook-slinging work, softening Jeezy’s growl with chanteuse work more anonymous than any she’s put in since that fun. single.
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Maybe I’d rate it a [6] if it didn’t feature those annoying voices echoing throughout the whole song. 
[5]