Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Willow ft. Nicki Minaj – Fireball

There are worse role models… for Nicki.


[Video][Website]
[4.92]

Alex Ostroff: “Fireball” recaptures the anything-goes attitude to pop that made “Whip My Hair” such a blast (and whose absence made “21st Century Girl” such a drag). There’s a willingness to sound ridiculous in the search for fun that’s admirable, from the opening “Um…hello?” to the operatic verse-endings that recall Ciara’s “High Price“. In fact, Willow has so many accents, inflections voices and gags here that Nicki’s presence might be considered unnecessary. Worth it if only for the “Hadouken” reference, “Brrrrrraids up!” and the string of vaguely forced rhymes leading into the “Will & Jada is my neighba hata” punchline. The only thing that doesn’t entirely work is the chorus, which would work better if it wasn’t “I’m the fireball of the party,” which sounds awkward for reasons I can’t quite figure out.
[7]

John Seroff: To be fair, it wasn’t as if I expected Willow to follow up “Whip My Hair” with anything of importance; it’s entirely likely she’ll never bottle lightning that way ever again.  To be fair, I’ve more or less given up on Nicki; she’s not speaking to me and she’s not made for me and I’m not gonna harp on her as a grand opportunity missed any more than I really have to.  To be fair, Hype Williams’ video isn’t quite so much about sexing up eleven-year-olds as it is about sped-up jerk by way of Rhythm Nation.  But this hook, this beat, this production are all severely weaksauce and that’s not fair.
[3]

Brad Shoup: My favorite part is actually the background dudes singing “I’m just heatin’ up/Ayyyy” — the track could have used more of that, less of the kazoo figure. Minaj hands over a standard-issue verse that amuses in the final line (Willow brags about calling up Obama, Nicki brags about… knowing Willow’s mom and dad). Credit where it’s due: those high notes are a wonderful touch, but as ever, Willow is a kid trying to put over grown-up swag; she almost lost me at “hello.”
[4]

Doug Robertson: Young, talented, successful… that’s just some of the many reasons to hate Willow Smith, but annoyingly her music isn’t one of them. This is another seemingly effortless slice of now, in which even Minaj’s contribution fails to take centre stage, such is the force of Willow’s own personality. It never sounds contrived, despite the inevitable record company involvement, and never falls into the novelty trap that’s always a danger for someone of her age. If she carries on at this rate she’ll probably be releasing her first career retrospective at the age of sixteen, followed by becoming queen of the entire world and all other related territories well before her eighteenth birthday.
[7]

Alfred Soto: An uninspired chorus and bleh Minaj keeps this collaboration from being the party it’s billed as. I suspect Willow still hadn’t plumbed the depths of her charisma. Any girl who can demonstrate her ecumenism by mentioning her mom and dad without courting smugness deserves Beyoncé’s producers.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: Willow Smith’s playground chant schtick was getting pretty tired a few months ago, it’s beyond annoying now. In her father’s youth, his cluelessness was part of his charm; now the converse is true — Willow’s creepily precocious self-conscious posturing is downright terrifying. Is this what’s passing for “entitlement” for preteen girls? Are we supposed to find her rah-rah massive ego entertaining? And what the hell is Nicki Minaj doing in here? (Well, besides wearing the most awesome dress of all time — thank goodness Sanrio isn’t so uptight about image appropriation as Mattel, apparently.)
[1]

Iain Mew: Over gently bouncing beats, Willow stakes her claim to being a fireball in the sense of providing a burst of heat and energy to others, complete with comedy bragging and horn tooting. Actually, it mostly sounds like she’s singing “I’m the fireball of the pie”, but I get the idea. Nicki then turns the song on its head, playing Street Fighter and setting her up as an equally cartoonish but more aggressive type of fireball, and it’s enough to keep the chorus fun a bit longer.
[7]

Matt Cibula: 33 percent endearing and adorable, 33 percent insufferably annoying, 34 percent calculated to be a mix of the first two. ‘Twould be best used as a soundtrack for the entrance of the bitchiest girl in some as-yet-unfilmed ABC Family show about a high school that no one ever attended.
[5]

Pete Baran: What kind of parent leaves a eleven year old in the same room as Nicki Minaj? Possibly the same parents who allow their daughter to believe they are the fireball of party, not realising that the two types of parties which have fireballs in them are either ones which are about to burn down or ones where people are playing Dungeons & Dragons.
[3]

Josh Langhoff: It’s like someone read about L’Trimm, Fannypack, and/or M.I.A., had the genius idea to reconstruct such music with Willow and Nicki, and came up with something unreasonably dull.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Why is this trying to be a song? You won’t remember Nicki, the toy bin of beats or Willow’s soprano trills. You’ll remember the parts that sound like “I Whip My Fire Back And Forth.” And you won’t remember there being this many of them.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s not just the broken-dancehall grooves and sub-Lion King funk flexes in the background — Willow is genuinely exciting here, having ditched the wannabe vocal imitations of “21st Century Girl” and keeping it low and mean; or as low and mean as an eleven-year-old can, which is about as transparent as I like my tough-posturing to be. (Nicki Minaj’s gleeful playacting pushes the same buttons.) But it’s the video that puts it over the top, Willow’s rapid, anarchic dancing riding exactly the line between goofy, hyperactive kid stuff and — oh God he’s going to drop his second MJ reference in two days — the controlled outré of the young Michael Jackson.
[9]

7 Responses to “Willow ft. Nicki Minaj – Fireball”

  1. “He got an K-pop singer sound like Michael Jackson/He got a kid pop singer dance like Michael Jackson…”

  2. Scratch that bit about Sanrio; I can’t track the provenance of Nicki’s dress, actually. But the point remains — her getup is the most interesting thing going on here.

  3. This would be an 8 or 9 for me if it weren’t for the chorus, which is just so *thin*, but beyond that doesn’t really work as a sentence. Seriously. I don’t even know what I would/could replace it with but those magnificent verses deserve better.

  4. Everyone who gave this less than a 7 is the worst.

  5. yyyyeah, no.

  6. Nicki Minaj, of course, would totally be at a (really specific type of) party where people are playing D&D.

  7. The video is several kinds of disturbing for me, especially when she’s gyrating in front of a green screen fireball. As for the song, the only thing that (barely) left an impression on me was Nicki’s verse. Willow, as always, has been Auto-Tuned to the point of sounding like V.I.C.I.’s best friend.