The Singles Jukebox

Slurry hot slurry…

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[2.14]

Nortey Dowuona: At some time in your life, you get to the point where there is less life ahead of you than there is behind you. It’s a scary and exciting time, but eventually you have to face it, instead of despairing and caving into attempting to avoid this realization and trying to stay eternally young. The reason I’m not doing my usual spiraling encapsulation of how this song sounds and I’m pontificating, is cuz there is so little in it that Jay and Nas, once rivals and callow young men, but now fathers and millionaires, can say to their peers, and even less to their children and grandchildren. It’s a bad thing to hoard the resources and efforts of their younger coworkers James and The Hics, both of whom have done better work. STREETRUNNER and Tarik Azzouz put a great deal of effort into this glossy but matte black beat. And it’s all at the service of two formerly angry young men who refuse and will never be able to grow up. It’s a shame that the men who wrote “Politics As Usual” and “I Gave You Power” are so bereft of anything they want or can say, but it makes sense. The punishment we gave them truly befits their crimes, and they can sleep unbothered by the atrophy of their art and the atrocities they’ve committed. (ALSO CRYPTOCURRENCY SCARFACE!!!?!? WHAT!!!?? AND NOBODY THINKS TO ASK SCARFACE FOR A VERSE TO SAVE THIS SONG!!?!)
[0]

Edward Okulicz: I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I might make an exception for people who are still saying “sorry not sorry” in 2021. This is such a lazy soup that offends me all the more for everyone involved seeming so smug about its hack-work.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: DJ Khaled is basically the current era’s Puff Daddy, except that the latter has more talent; the former primarily has a great address book. Khaled’s records at this point feel exhausting — a collision of “look at all my famous friends,” dull hip hop production, and endless exhortations of “ANOTHER ONE!” and “WE THE BEST MUSIC!” and his own fucking name. I assume we’re supposed to be excited by “Sorry Not Sorry” because it features the fences-mended pair of Nas and Jay-Z, but they forgot to have anything to say. If you want to hear rappers — great rappers, no less — sleepwalking through their verses, this is the place to start. Fauntleroy does his best James Blake manqué, and the absurd “Harmonies by the Hive” credit simply means a few cooed syllables from Beyoncé. What this all amounts to, together, is a whole lotta bling on a burlap sack.
[2]

Michael Hong: Keep waiting for someone on this to do something interesting, for Nas or Jay-Z to do something with their verses (even DJ Khaled’s tag sounds more spirited), or for Fauntleroy’s autotuned “sorry not sorry” to not sound so meek. Apparently, the best this group could do was get a sample of Beyoncé sighing.
[2]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: I don’t know if the piano sample of Fauntleroy is out of tune on the intro, but something seems off. Nas and Jay-Z drop verses that feel a little more functional than fun, though I do love “Circular ice on Japanese whiskey, on my mezzanine/Overlookin’ the City of Angels, the angel investor in things”. But unlike some other songs we’ve covered recently, this is really a “more money, no problems” anthem. And while Jay and Bey’s two Bs pale in comparison to the Gates and Bezos divorce settlements, I still feel strange valorizing billionaires as a concept. Taken at face value, it’s a fun little jam, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
[4]

Samson Savill de Jong: You know how it is when you ask your friends to do you a favour, you’re grateful, but if they don’t do it as well as you need it’s awkward to ask them for more help; you don’t want to seem like you’re taking their generosity for granted. DJ Khaled probably decided it wasn’t worth it and to just use what he had. This song finds Jay-Z at his worst, spaced out bars with lackluster rhymes mostly bragging about himself being wealthy and demanding we be happy for/envious of him. Nas is better, but not by much — cornball lines using tropes so played out that they’re eligible for the rap hall of fame (reference Scarface, I bet no rapper’s done that before). James Fauntleroy mediocrely sings a chorus built around a line that was a tired cliche in 2014, but used entirely unironically here. This song is aiming to sound glamorous and luxurious, like a Rolls Royce, but look closely and you’ll see the paint is flaking off, it’s not been washed in three years and there’s dents in the doors and at the back that haven’t quite been buffed out.
[2]

Ian Mathers: You’ve got to hand it to Khaled, he’s right; this is, indeed, another one.
[3]