The Singles Jukebox

They were gonna find out anyway…

[Video]
[5.69]

Crystal Leww: When I was in high school, I went over to a friend’s house to work on a school project together, and she put on “Ms. New Booty” by Bubba Sparxxx. As teenagers, we were absolutely shrieking at that chorus, just like jumping up and down, hyped up on 7-11 Big Gulp soda. It is still one of the most viscerally funny, goofiest, most unserious things I’ve ever heard in music. I hope that feeling that I bottled up and hold dear to my heart even today is what what teens today felt the first time they heard “my coochie pink, my bootyhole brown!”
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It was the pound heard ’round the town, and Sexyy Red became an instant star. It’s easy to see why: she’s having a total blast here while rapping with minimal effort, in a regular talking cadence. She lets out a laugh or two, throws in casual ad-libs, and says some of the most memorable lines of the year. Kanye talking about bleached assholes was always unrelatable; finally, a bootyhole song for the people.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Look, I enjoy my trips to Pound Town as much as the next person, I just have some questions about how the Pound Town tourism board is spending their budget.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: This has been Sexyy Red’s year, as last year was GloRilla’s year, as last year was Doja Cat’s year, as last year was Megan Thee Stallion’s year, as last year was Cardi B’s year… can we just let them all share the next year? I’m really irritated by the way we hype up a new femme rapper for a year, praise them to the roof and back, then give up on them afterwards (remember Chika? Remember Saweetie? Remember Free JT? Remember Maliibu Miitch? Remember Treety? Remember Dreezy?) We let too many mid male rappers get the chance to drop and hog the discourse with either praise or condemnation and seem to forget that women rappers are just as diversely populated and are good as hell. (REMEMBER CUPCAKKE!!!??) I can’t even be too positive about this song cuz I know what happened to literally everybody who we were like, “they so good omg we love them, twerking on the runway” — not doing that shit this year. All you folks pissed about Yachty making Tame Impala Feeding Music use that anger to engage with the next Rapsody album instead. And “Hellcats SRTs” is the actual best song Sexyy Red has ever done, but it’s not as memeable. Fuck this.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Wary of stanning for female rap artists who wield vulgarity like an épée — the fandom, depending on its expression, can look an awful lot like exoticizing — I resisted Sexyy Red. Her conversational tone reminded me what I admire about the Everyperson anonymity of dance singers from Shannon and Bernard Sumner to Katy B and Peggy Gou. I’ve accepted “Pound Town.” Now, about her embrace of Trump...
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: “TRUMP TO CITY: DROP DEAD“
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Please note as you read this score that for our 2023 return, we have also re-curved the rating scale, and the YouTube comments are a [-10].
[0]

Leah Isobel: “Pound Town” works wonders as a comedy bit and as an introduction to Sexyy Red’s charismatic delivery — the way she tosses off That One Line and then audibly starts giggling into the next is star power personified. I’m not sure it functions as well as a song as it does a meme, but that’s what “SkeeYee” is for.
[6]

Michelle Myers: Sexyy Red has better comedic timing than most professional comics. On “Pound Town,” she’s playful and winky, delivering unhinged lines about scouting Miami for hoochie daddies and exposing her cheating man (love u baby!).
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: “My coochie pink, my booty-hole brown” was the first line that made me laugh out loud. The rest of “Pound Town” is a treasure trove of deadpan punchlines, from the withering delivery of “I’m out here in Miami,” to the feigned imperative of “come suck a bitch toes,” to the fourth wall breaking of “I can’t say his name, ’cause he be cheating.” The Nicki remix, for what it’s worth, is an [8].
[7]

Will Adams: Listening to a song shouldn’t make me want to furiously smash Logic’s nudge function to get the vocal to actually align to the beat.
[2]

Jeffrey Brister: Somewhat less…technically complex than “WAP,” but I value directness. There’s a lot to be said about clever wordplay and all the other literary techniques you want to reference, but sometimes you just need to hear “come suck a bitch toes” and appreciate the simple beauty of being insanely and candidly horny.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: I’ve been known to enjoy filth, but you’ve gotta give me something to latch onto. Filth for the sake of filth is just sad. 2 Live Crew, for instance, were filthy, but they at least sounded like they were having fun. John Waters of course glorified in filth in his early work, and made it art. There’s no fun or art in “Pound Town”; Sexyy Red just sounds bored and uninspired, like she’s just waiting for this to catch on online so she can start cashing checks. I hope she invests well.
[0]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Obnoxious!
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: During his career peak, even while he was claiming to be the best alive, Jay-Z would often demur about whether he was actually a rapper. He didn’t write anything down; he was a businessman; he would retire any minute now. This disengagement with the expectations of art, the notion that creativity might call someone to account and absorb them into a guild with traditions and limitations, has been resisted by other rappers since: Lil B, for instance, switching from Bay Area sneaker raps to rambling psychedelia or such MCs as Blueface or Teejayx6 severing the links between beat and flow. On “Pound Town,” Sexyy Red reminds me of how Chicago drill icon Katie Got Bandz mumbled and smirked her way through her rhymes, as if she were too dangerous to bother trying to be a rapper. Sexyy Red mumbles here, and cuts her lines off into short, simply rhymed taunts, as if she’s too hot or maybe too horny to rap properly. She collapses into a giggle half way through some of these missives, switches to a playful sing-song for others, and breezily apologizes for almost giving away a man who’s been sneaking around with her (“I love you baby!”). Despite the brooding piano-led beat, which approaches hook-ups the way Nas did paranoid home invasion in “Shoot Em ‘Up,” it’s fun! Sexyy Red does what she wants; why would she bother putting in the effort of rapping properly? And even if “Pound Town” is more languid and less urgently anarchic than “Born By the River,” and perhaps less insistent than “SkeeYee,” it still has an important message about which parts of Sexyy Red are pink and which parts are brown.
[8]

Brad Shoup: The textbook definition of “it ain’t that deep”.
[8]