Today’s controversy is brought to you by the letter ‘J’…

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Juana Giaimo: Snow Tha Product has been bilingual for years now, and that’s why “Bilingüe” is so genuine — instead of being just another track that follows the Latin American boom. The chorus is a little bit weak, but her extremely fast flow is powerful both in English and in Spanish and she always has the most witty lines — “Ja Ja con J/ Ja Ja with the J” is a amazing punch.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Very kind of Snow Tha Product to begin the song with a warning: “I really cannot rap.” In all seriousness, her rapping is competent but there’s nothing noteworthy here because it’s a song that lives and dies on its central conceit of being delivered in two languages. I hate when Korean-American rappers do this unimaginative bilingual shtick too. Part of this is how it’s an unhelpful reminder that minorities aren’t given a platform, so we’re out here making songs about the fact that we can speak two languages instead of simply using this as a tool to enhance songs with more interesting subject manner. Even more, having these thoughts is a tiresome act in and of itself.
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Jonathan Bradley: “I really cannot wrap my head around the fact it’s,” is an opening line that has almost no content: these are words that stall and fill space and end with awkward enjambment setting up a slant rhyme for “fantastic.” Snow Tha Product’s delivery is ungainly too, failing to find the pocket. This awkwardness extends to the song’s theme: I have heard rappers switch languages many times before, but they generally don’t do it in service of a song about switching languages. Snow does want to make a point about the coexistence of anglophone and hispanophone cultures in the United States, but it is a point that better rappers have shown and not told: spelling it out like this — almost literally, when it comes to the “jajaja with the j” part — reduces the song to didacticism.
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Will Rivitz: Snow Tha Product, in her inimitably vicious delivery and deathly seriousness, is one of maybe five rappers who can almost sell the lyrical mess that is “Bilingue.” “Almost” included as a qualifier because the Sesame Street inanity of “Bitch, I ‘jaja’ con jota / ‘Hahaha’ with the ‘J’” is both nigh-unlistenable and also the fifth-worst line in the song at most charitable.
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Tim de Reuse: I have a soft spot for bilingual pop that’s about how it’s bilingual, but it can be pretty hokey in the wrong hands. This tune nails it on two levels: firstly, it’s got enough playful code-switching and cross-language rhymes to dazzle and confuse any poor monolinguals in the audience (the line “tú eres cheapy” against “beep beep beep beep” is particularly audacious), but it also recognizes that language is a marker of identity, and having two languages gives you two identities to play with. Caught with ties to two countries that don’t seem to want her around, flitting between two languages is an act of defiance and self-affirmation — nobody tied down to a single nation could ever keep up! I, too, am from two places, but growing up in suburban Texas I never made an effort to learn the mother tongues of either of my parents, which I profoundly regret. This tune stings because it really makes me wish I knew just enough Tamil to confidently shut down anyone that might question my authenticity.
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Nortey Dowuona: Bulky, pulsing bass drums buoy filtering synths as Snow pulls glaciers over the Arctic and Antarctic.
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Katherine St Asaph: Those lamenting the death of technical skills at the hands of The Kids, The Algorithms, The SoundClouds, or whatever is today’s designated scapegoat, could (but probably won’t bother to) find it here. Snow’s skills are buoyed by a healthy, Tkay Maidza-ish amount of goofiness — the only context in which half these lines would work, from the wordplay to the first non-clunky “fuck Trump” lyric I’ve heard since the descent into hell.
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Iris Xie: I am deeply amused that my queer college party scene, which was into “ratchet music” for a few years, has helped contribute to this review, but the first few bars sound akin to Lady’s “Twerk.” Considering Snow Tha Product is making music out in Atlanta, I’m not surprised if she picked up on a few sounds from there, and this beat, knife-like and buoyant, is quite welcome because it has the same fun and free-wheeling fierceness. But significantly, what calls out to me about “Bilingue” is that it literally sounds like it could have come from some of my friends, who are really fierce Chican@s. When I hear Snow Tha Product switch between Spanish and English and ride that beat, it puts me back in a place of appreciation and acknowledgment for how much Chican@ feminism really impacted my world-view and attitude towards loving others. My friends are effortlessly cool and wonderful, but it came from them learning to be unapologetically fierce, analytical, and loving in honoring their histories and families and all the heartbreak and pride that comes with it. Looking up Snow Tha Product’s history, she’s a Chicana from San Jose, San Diego, and Los Angeles, and that energy runs throughout the track and reminds me of the unapologetic attitude about how some of my friends move effortlessly (and not so effortlessly) between speaking Spanish and English. I was enormously privileged to be able to listen to a lot of their stories, and I get reminded of frequent, late night convos of trying to figure out our personal lived experiences between growing up Asian American and Chican@/Latinx American while being nonbinary/women of color, and our specific intersectional feminist differences. For some of those conversations, like in “Bilingue,” the topics would turn to the role of the mom, the cousins, the families, the machismo/toxic masculinity, the micro-aggressions, and the relentless need to prove yourself and be taken seriously, and those experiences are in spades here. Just because you need to dance doesn’t mean you forget about your politics.
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