The Singles Jukebox

Let’s press some charges:

[Video][Website]
[5.29]

Crystal Leww: Someone earlier this week was telling me that radio stations were refusing to play XXXTENTACION, in part because of the serious allegations of assault against the rapper. When I pressed them further, it seems as though there wasn’t quite the same response for Kodak Black, whose “Tunnel Vision” is now sitting at #6 on the Hot 100, and who is also facing his own set of serious allegations of sexual assault. Most of its chart success is attributable to streaming (if you’re on the team of a young rap star who is only releasing music via Soundcloud and not on Spotify…wyd? But that’s for another time), but radio has had no problem inviting him along with Kodak Black appearing on The Breakfast Club earlier this year, mostly to talk about his beef with Lil Wayne and how much his mom loves him. This is such a rap radio friendly hit, complete with a beat from the current rap radio production king Metro Boomin. “Tunnel Vision” has a rap cadence that snaps, with an undertone that the lyrics are extremely real. But this is what the industry does — it values authenticity in its young, up and coming rap stars while shirking responsibility for what that means at the same time. It’ll play it up when it’s convenient and then shun it when it’s not. Ultimately “Tunnel Vision” is a catchy song, but its success is a textbook formula.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I understand why “Tunnel Vision” is the South Florida native’s first top ten: Metro Boomin’s flute sample, the pretty guitar ripples, and the high-pitched slur of Kodak Black himself. Perhaps listeners identify with the self-pity and aggrandizing too. Who knows — if we hadn’t seen his name linked to a sexual assault accusation, then “I get any girl I want, any girl I want” would sound less grotesque.
[3]

Anthony Easton: The introduction and the last little bit of this, have a weird pastoral energy, and something that sounds pretty close to panpipes. It kind of matches the loose and slow delivery of Kodak, and overshadows a pretty anaemic beat. 
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Kodak’s mumbled chorus pins a melody in a wobbly beat running samples that seems to only match up by coincidence. In it, he might talk a good one about the unfair prison system, though he also reveals just what about his character got him caught up in the system in the first place. “I need me a lil baby who gon’ listen” comes across more chilly than it should. While it was easier to take him for his word in a song like last year’s “Lockjaw,” it’s much more complicated to parse this.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: The flute’s what catches the ear first, but it’s also annoying, and a detractor from the more interesting off-kilter melody that forms the basis of the production. Kodak Black drops some clangers amidst some good lines, but not so many that the verses aren’t passable, but the chorus and that goddamned flute are diminishing returns the second time — four minutes of them almost had me wishing for more lines about needing toilet pape-r.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I know that it’s the chorus of this song which is grabbing ears, but it’s the verses that are the key to me, where Black sounds like a Dirty South rapper of an earlier era. His voice has some grease on it. His lyrics don’t do a lot, but Metro Boomin’s production, of course, does. 
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: For all the talk of the Internet supposedly eradicating the divisions of life, Kodak Black thwarts that. The media has entered a point of respectable polarization on how to deal with Kodak’s irreverence, ignorance and outright indefensible actions; this debate gets more and more intense as a great deal of America’s rap audience — often unaddressed in the digital age — has managed to push “Tunnel Vision” into the upper echelons of the Billboard Hot 100. Frankly, the record isn’t even a particular highlight of Kodak’s discography and were it not for the infectious flute loop found by Metro Boomin we wouldn’t be entertaining this hook or those opening lines on the first verse. At the same time, no matter how distasteful the idea of Kodak being one of rap’s biggest stars right now is for so many, many others refuse to let him be swept out of sight, even when he’s not living up to the potential he showed that led to us having the problem of giving someone like Kodak a platform.
[5]