Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer – Give Me Everything
It’s a crossover extravaganza!
Renato Pagnani: Tom Breihan once (half-)jokingly wrote that Pitbull > Nas. One area where Pitbull bests Nas without question is crossover smashes, mostly because Pitbull doesn’t do anything but crossover smashes. He pulls off the sleazy-but-still-endearing rapper persona better than anyone these days, and it’s because he embraces his sleaziness. Pitbull knows the sleaze factor of the old come-on-baby-come-home-with-me-tonight-because-the-world-might-end-in-the-morning shtick, so he grafts some apocalyptic trance synths onto the four-on-the-floor beat and gets Ne-Yo to mispronounce “to-noight.” He doesn’t try to hide the fact he’s trying to get in your girl’s pants, and the strange thing is you don’t want to punch him in the face for it as much as do a round of shots with him, chuckling at his upfront audaciousness.
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Anthony Easton: Pitbull’s hyper-performative heterosexuality here becomes quite hilarious when you realise how much of the bear community wants to fuck him quite severely.
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Mallory O’Donnell: Remember when the idea of hip-hop and R&B artists collaborating on a club-friendly keyboard jam was exciting and fresh? I’m generally a fan of Pitbull, but this makes Usher’s synthpop sound positively edgy in comparison. There’s just something so dry and mannered about it — the unmistakable aroma of a professional music studio, the whiff of last year’s trends and the oh-so-naughties scent of a parcel of unnecessary guest artists.
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Katherine St Asaph: When Chris Brown did this kind of monoto-need you now bosh, the point was to distract you through sheer blandness from the fact that he’s an abusive jackass with a zombie career. What’s Pitbull’s excuse?
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Michelle Myers: I really like the beginning of this song, where it kind of sounds like that Black Eyed Peas song about tonight being a good night and where Pitbull rhymes “kodak” with “kodak.” And there’s something appealing about Ne-Yo advising you to “grab somebody sexy and tell ’em hey.” Unfortunately, the rest of the song is the average apocalyptic club-rap that has been dominating the charts during 2011. It’s strange times we live in, that a pop song this big and complex could sound so stale and uninteresting.
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Al Shipley: Half of the song features the same rote Pit verses and squeaky skronky synths as every other dance pop hit of the year, but the unexpected beauty of Ne-Yo’s gliding hook and that gentle piano riff elevate the whole thing to serious summer jam status.
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Zach Lyon: The performances rank as such: 1. Ne-Yo, 2. Nayer, 3. Afrojack, 4. Pitbull. Which isn’t to say that Afrojack’s production isn’t perfectly adequate for the song at hand. Pitbull’s bridge, for that matter, is crucial, though his verses are Just The Worst (“I’m gonna fall on top of your girl” is such a failed “punchline” that it’s difficult for me to listen to). And Nayer’s… bridge? post-chorus? is miniature both in length and voice but also crucial. But Ne-Yo! Maybe I’m just desperate for more of him on the radio, but this chorus is just one giant birthday cake with a stripper inside. All the song’s parts can be separated so cleanly, and its structure is so wonky (I’m no pop music theorist but I can count at least forty bridges, including that drum fill) that its consistency is impressive. Perhaps it’s because the four names it’s credited to are the only names involved in its primary creation (written by Pit, Ne-Yo and Afrojack, produced by Afrojack) that it sounds like a genuinely collaborative attempt at showcasing the individual talents of each.
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Edward Okulicz: Most of the points come from Ne-Yo’s chorus, which is pure horniness over video game lasers, because that’s what sticks. I have no idea why you’d want to hear Pitbull’s agreeable but average raps, but you wouldn’t change the channel to avoid them.
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Alfred Soto: With Ne-Yo singing a more fetching hook than anything on his last album, Pitbull should have stretched in kind, but all he does is remind me that he’s fast ossifying into the Lil Wayne of coke-fueled club bangers, Miami edition.
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Jonathan Bogart: I can’t imagine that this song makes any sense outside of very specific atmospheric conditions; but fuck what Yankees or other weather-experiencing citizenry think, this is made for the broad stripe of hell that is Los Angeles to Miami in the summertime. A beat as hot as the pavement in the afternoon, synths as icy as a windowless warehouse pumped full of air conditioning, stocked with characters right out of central casting: the party-hearty Latino, the exquisitely-dressed romantic, the woman who’s barely there, just a low murmur and a smile and she’s faded. The sun’s setting, and the palm trees are on fire against the sky; the piano droplets fall like ice from a too-sweaty drink. It was a lovely fantasy while it lasted.
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Doug Robertson: Everybody wants a slice of the Saturday night TV-soundtrack money that the Black Eyed Peas cornered with “I Gotta Feeling,” don’t they? This isn’t that good — and don’t argue, it was good before it was overplayed so much that the very atoms of the song itself turned to dust — and it’s reluctant to actually let go and celebrate the moment, but it’ll keep you going through the early evening, just long enough before the good stuff arrives.
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Matthew Harris: When I hear this, I imagine it playing on some future episode of Jersey Shore. Ronnie and Sammi have gotten together again. He’s wiping away coke-filled tears with his gorilla paw, his voice squeaking as he vows against grinding. She’s apologizing for scratching his face with a flung cellphone. They embrace, a brown hand and pink nails across the silver spangles of his enormous Ed Hardy shirt. Memorial fireworks spritz over the bay. You don’t really notice the song. It punctuates the scene’s mild pathos just enough to keep you watching, but it definitely won’t be enough to heighten any sadness, later, when your worsening insomnia keeps you up.
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