The Singles Jukebox

Someone give these boys a coffee.

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[5.14]Andy Hutchins: “Look alive, look alive,” implores one of the most exciting rappers of the decade, “be the highlight of my night.” Over a beat this delicately somnolent, it’s begging for a wake-up call. The second album is the drugs album, though, I guess.
[4]

Alfred Soto: “Numb, quasi-ruminative” Rae Sremmurd makes me as suspicious as “Nuanced, character-driven” The Weekend, a comparison which should indicate who’s influencing whom. This is the anomie of the teens in Kids, intended to impress as much for its cool as its cautionary tale aspects. But while “Hands up if your head the dumbest” may gross me out, the boring way in which Slim slurs the line reminds me how shows of affectlessness need good acting.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Mike Will dishes a sweet glaze of midnight bass as always, and Swae Lee sings a lullaby-like chorus to match. Rae Sremmurd could use their own advice in their verses, though. They’re caught in a trance, maybe, but they sink into Mike Will’s digital haze enough to start sounding too numb for their own good.
[6]

Iain Mew: There’s a curious disconnect in a sound that’s so tailored for playing around with its laidback ease, and an act who never sound like they even want to. It’s not like they’ve always played things so cool and straight down to line, which makes the bland adequacy that results even weirder.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Mike Will’s beat conjures the feeling of having about the worst time possible in the club, which I don’t mean as a criticism at all! There’s an uneasy and almost great hook here, but Swae Lee’s performance — as if forced to record directly after waking up after two hours’ sleep — might be overegging the pudding based on the idea of numb distance implied by the title a little. The answer track, “Sound Alive,” writes itself.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I like Swae Lee’s sung chorus plenty, especially the weirdly precise way he enunciates. He’s a better rapper than partner Slim Jxmmi, too. Mike WiLL Made It supplies ’em with a solid, if unexceptional, trap track that does what it’s meant to (mainly, give Rae Sremmurd a platform). I think they’re singing/rapping this to ladies they’re interested in, but if so, “Look Alive” is a rather odd directive.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Swae Lee is A.R. Kane doing screwed New Jack: melodies deployed blithely despite the aftertaste. He’s the lurid core of this underwritten plinker.
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