The Singles Jukebox

The song of the something, anyway…

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[6.57]

Crystal Leww: I don’t want to say “DJ Mustard forever” because there was a period of time where DJ Mustard was definitely not good, but holy shit “Saved” is so good that it’s made me temporarily forget how bad EDMtrap-Mustard was. It pings and bounces and echoes. Ty Dolla $ign is back to his scoundrel ways, and that E-40 verse is filled with one great moment after another: “booooooty hella chunky,” “I ain’t Captain Save-A-Thot!”, “bitchbitchbitchbitch!” This will never go beyond urban radio, unfortunately, but it’s a pretty strong contender for song of the summer there.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: No one but no one sounds quite like E-40 after all these decades, and he damn near always adds something to the tracks he laces. Ty$ is roughly this decade’s T-Pain, nimble enough to sing and rap and be solid at both. Team ’em up and they sound good together, though I wish the song had a little more to it.
[6]

Josh Langhoff: Recently in thrall to some mysterious beauty and shit, DJ Mustard has enlisted his new friends Twice as Nice to devise a four-bar cycle of syncopated synth floatiness. It’s similar to what they concocted for Kid Ink’s “Promise,” only there’s more of everything — boomy kick drum, pitched-up vocal sample running on a different syncopated cycle, some guys singing “Whoa-oa-ooooooooah” like they wandered over from a country song about the nostalgic implications of summertime drunkenness. Sometimes the rhythmic elements line up with one another, more often they don’t, but instead of sounding jagged and hard, the composite rhythm creates a cushy polyrhythmic suspension for our two anti-heroes to float away in. If I’m feeling charitable, the rappers’ shortcomings — flow patterns that play everything too straight, their less interesting takes on a 20(++++)-year-old lyrical conceit — reflect their submission to this masterful beat; or maybe they recognized that, in the shadow of such overstuffedness, they could simply toss some stuff off.
[7]

Josh Love: In which Ty Dolla $ign resurrects E-40’s churlish relic, “Captain Save-a-Hoe,” reminding us how depressingly little progress has been made in some respects over the past 23 years regarding gender dynamics that this kind of sentiment is still rubber-stamped as acceptable. Bemoaning gold diggers as the cost of doing business is uninspired enough, but what makes you queasy here is the unabashed glee expressed at getting to knock an unworthy striver back down the socioeconomic ladder. Mustard’s beat is totally pro forma too.
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: As usual with Ty’s work, subtlety is everything. Yes, we’re discussing a guy who said someone else’s girl looked like a “boogerwoof” or something as possessing subtlety. But the whole point of Dolla $ign is his mastery of articulating the mundane, making an art out of dumb shit. He takes E-40’s trope (from anthem for playa-era paranoia “Captain Save-A-Hoe” and drives the point until it fractures and fragments. He won’t give a girl nothing, but he takes the time to call himself a fuckboy for doing so, affirming everyone’s favorite appropriated insult of last season. The girls don’t love him, but they’re trying to get money and use what they have to get what they want. There’s no tower of power for him to be sour in — instead they meet at the mutual point of dissatisfaction. It’s not like a scumbag like Ty could save anyone if they wanted anyway, right? Mustard does right by Ty with shimmery EDM-influenced ratchet-pop, letting arguably the biggest musical talent in the now-dormant movement get the shine he so richly deserves after so many false starts.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The Mustard beat has a tang, but the repetition of the hook comes one time too many at the expense of the varied arrangements on Free TC’s other tracks. Plus, it’s been out for months so I’ve had time to get sick of it.
[4]

Andy Hutchins: It is almost summer, and yet “Saved” has seemingly seen its reign on the radio come and go — a shame, to be sure, because nothing’s sounded better steaming out of the dials to my ears this year. Ty is smooth as hell in maybe his most natural role — the consummate dickhead who still believes in “saving” as a concept, but is still fly enough to make the ladies’ eyerolls affectionate — and 40, forever preserved in amber (-colored malt beverages), is playing the same character that made him a regional star more than two decades ago, stretched vowels and all. Yet the reason this, and not “Captain Save A Hoe,” might make a party playlist, is the immortal, instantly ingratiating DJ Mustard and Twice as Nice instrumental, icy synths plinking every which way like lightning is shearing them off a glacier, then slicing under the sea for the bridge. Massive isn’t the half.
[10]