T.I. ft. B.o.B – We Don’t Get Down Like Y’all
It’s the weekend, so let’s just say this is rubbish and move on, OK?
[Video][Website]
[3.25]
Katherine St Asaph: Not with that riff, certainly.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: My excitement at having T.I. back is heavily moderated by the recurring thought “wait… was that just homophobic?”
[5]
Alfred Soto: T.I. is smarter than this poised, smug, fag-baiting embrace of gangsta cliches, but who cares as long as he’s gets his comeback, right? Wrong and wrong again.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Man, prison turned Tip into a jackass. Awaiting the next inevitable probation violation, the new Mr. Blackwell bides his time by composing a style guide. Out: hot pants! In: “three-piece lil’ suits”! Out: Gossip! In: Proper prostate function! Out: His previous, insufferable moralizing! In: Baroque organ, sweet drum programming and a sneering B.o.B! In: Jail! Out: Of touch!
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: As far as rappers engaging in homophobia go — and I would prefer that they do not — Tip should check with Odd Future upstart Tyler, the Creator for hints. In “Yonkers,” Tyler threatened to murder “that faggot nigga” B.o.B, T.I.’s counterpart here, in an aeronautic and idiotic murder-suicide. On “We Don’t Get Down Like Y’all,” Tip collaborates with Tyler’s upmarket nemesis, then gawps at the young folks’ colorful clothes, clearing his throat with a “listen up, fag-bait,” and insisting the objects of his opprobrium must have been shopping in the women’s section. He’d sound like a bratty teenager, except regular teens are smart enough not to give a fuck. So why does the King of the South care how the kids dress? This is Tip doing his “D.O.A.,” in sound as well as fury, only where Jay retired to mushy-peas gentility, Tip got locked up and grew old removed from the game. The great shame is that here and there, in the first verse particularly, he shows flashes of his Trap Muzik-era grit. Strange that during the come-up he seemed to look over his shoulder less.
[4]
Alex Ostroff: I’m a sucker for organ-drenched hip hop, which is the only explanation I have for my youthful enjoyment of Swollen Members. The production here is menacing in a beefed-up Transylvanian way. T.I.’s enjoying himself more than he has in a while, effortlessly flipping internal rhymes every other word and dismissing unspecified suckers. Nonetheless, reserving the entire second verse for drag queen jokes and fagbaiting just isn’t a good look – he’s seriously so insecure that he’s threatened by skinny jeans? “OMIGOD WHY THEY JEANZ SO TIGHT?!”
[6]
Edward Okulicz: This is oppressively cocksure and minimally competent brag-hop filled to the brim with stupid and seemingly out-of-time (Bells! Those echoey “hey” samples that bring to mind “Here Comes The Hotstepper”!) non-sequiturs and not a single rhyme of note or merit. This has got to be one of the tinniest, least kinetic hip-hop tracks in living memory of the Hot 100, so much so that it’s hard to believe this guy once did “What You Know.” T.I. does at least demonstrate the presence of mind to realise the only thing that could make it worse after gratuitous but weak-sauce homophobia would be to make some of the lyrics only one step above poo-vomit-and-wee jokes. Wretched.
[1]
Anthony Easton: I would sooner be the one who is blown, or who blows, than someone who delivers blow. Fellatio is awesome and cocaine is boring. Also, T.I. has about ten per cent of the talent of Sylvester, a quarter of the funk of RuPaul, and not nearly the flow of Big Freedia — who might not be a drag queen — but proves that hip-hop can move past this bullshit.
[0]
It is awesome that Alex and Breezy referenced the same single.
T.I. has become this weirdly insular rapper. He used to be, like Jay, someone you listened to to take vicarious pleasure in his awesomeness, but now he just seems to be talking to himself.
This is Tip doing his “D.O.A.,”
^ Nah.
wait, no one bothered to point out the irony of him doing this song with fucking BOB, the patron saint of LRG skinny jeans ads in rap magazines?
Even I don’t read rap magazines anymore.