The Singles Jukebox

Tiggs Da Author 1 : George the Poet 0

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Scott Mildenhall: Expensive-looking video? FIFA 16 placement? TV syncs abound? Someone obviously wants this to be a hit, and it sounds like it. It’s in the estimable spiritual lineage of “We No Speak Americano,” yet disappointingly relies too much on the resilience of the repeated title, and at the presumable expense of a longer outing for the horn breakdown. Luckily Leshurr is around to add a bit more variety, but it’s still unnecessarily lightweight.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Its a pretty dinky bit of retro-tinged pop with shades of inanity and subtlety blended in a safe mix. We’re sure to hear this used in more than a few advertising campaigns within the next year if we’re lucky.
[3]

Cassy Gress: Four phrases in, and I’m begging this song not to suck, because I’m so pleased with “You can call me pussy / Pussy is power.” A GUY singing that. Large swaths of my musical taste are tied up in roughly 1955-1967 and things that sample it, and I’m not sure even on a bad day I’d give this space-age surf mambo anything below a [6] because it just lights up too many places in my brain. I love how both Tiggs and Lady Leshurr put the emphasis on the “n” in “run” rather than the “u” because it gives the repeated “run run run run run” a sort of chugging sway, I love the almost choral “whoa papa run,” and Lady Leshurr can spit some serious fire.
[8]

Megan Harrington: I imagine mega-billion brands like McDonalds and Coca Cola are salivating — hard — over “Run” right now. It’s not just the baked in sunshine, but the way it seduces you with dry crackles and prominent percussion then fulfills the desire it manufactures with crystalline melodies. “Run” is advertising writ large which naturally leads to an immensely catchy bit of song. There’s no trick here, nothing to fall for, just such pure and obvious architecture that “Run” can’t be denied. 
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Brief and sweet like many of the best summery pop songs. Maybe short on ideas too, but the second verse’s male-female back-and-forth is terrific and the chorus is funky enough that Leshurr doesn’t completely steal the show. Put the break after Leshurr’s bit after everything and it’d be even better. Where one might ironically-but-not-really have put “Tequila” or “Mambo No. 5” on a mix, this would do just as well.
[9]

Brad Shoup: This counts as a sax solo, right? “Run” could be sampling one soul instrumental or stitching 20 together. For good measure, Tiggs tosses in some “Name Game” cadence and a joke from Yellowman’s book (“I’m sorry I stopped, sir/Don’t take me to the station”). Leshurr chips in her own casual dancehallisms before dropping a few bars that are basically a yo-yo trick. Tiggs has ideas, not a concept, which makes this a beast to recall in full — that “pussy is power” line though — but a blast to watch. Still, even at sprint length, this barely gets over the finish line.
[7]