The Singles Jukebox

Zebra thinks his score should be higher.

[Video][Website]
[6.18]

Michaela Drapes: Now that Paris is Burning is on Netflix streaming, and you can watch endless classic Vogue performances on YouTube, there’s no excuse not to know the backstory here. The first time I heard this track, I couldn’t resist promenading up and down my Brooklyn railroad apartment hallway doing moves I learned in a class a few months ago with a ballroom scene legend. You wanna talk about reading, kids? Despite the time that’s past and the lives that were lost, there’s a space for this sound, and it’s still fucking unstoppable.
[10]

Brad Shoup: It’s hard to vogue in the k-hole, kids.
[3]

John Seroff: I’m pretty sure this is a put-on and not in a Lonely Island way, more like Die Antwoord.  Intentions aside, there’s something honest and charming about the bare bones of banging on a desk in study hall and freestyling stupid. There’s also something annoying about the lack of imagination within the construction; it is, literally, one note. Even so, this almost aggregated more positive than negative until I realized I had an image of a zebra fucking a house cat in my head. Yuck.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Though reading bitches has a long and magnificently abusive heritage in queerdom, this made me think even more of a musical restaging of that episode of Community where Abed becomes a Mean Girl. It turned my head, though I wish they’d have made good on the threats.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Say “bitch” again.
[4]

Anthony Easton: This is strange and unseemly — the tom tom percussion has an aggressiveness, and Zebra Katz’s cold monotone doesn’t help.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Big-upped by Azealia Banks, repped by sanctimoniously indie blogs, and spare enough to be vicious — there’s no cushion to fall back on when the body blows come. Elegant, snotty, and mean. The more I listen, the more I love it.
[8]

Sabina Tang: Balances for four minutes on some fine needle-point between club track designed to induce a slow but irreversible 5AM chemical-dread meltdown; stripped-down, slyly humourous arrrrt-rap; and outright parody meme-bait (imagine [foo] reciting [bar] over precisely this instrumental, with precisely this inflection… eg. “Sir Ian McKellen”, “Rick Santorum’s tweets”). I am up for your hypnotic creepypasta horrors as long as I get a laugh out of it, I guess.
[7]

Michelle Myers: The beat is literally just a beat, nothing else, which gives Zebra Katz and Njena Reddd Foxxx plenty of space to echo about, delivering ice-cold threats and the cruel imagery of schoolyard taunting. Like any good reading it is cool, composed and sort of terrifying.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Imagine a second-string Wu member — U-God, let’s say — reciting his own version of Roxy’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache.” Then pat yourself on the back for thinking the twenty-first century is marvelous enough to allow the woman a part in her own exploitation.
[1]

Alex Ostroff: Zebra and Njena complement the minimalist track perfectly, with a tone that’s effortlessly calm and menacing. My only complaint is that there isn’t really any reading going on here — the promise to do so is too blunt and combative to really qualify. But as a statement of intent and a vogue soundtrack, “Ima Read” is astounding. Personal highlight: Njena’s bemused delivery of “Ima ice that bitch” that captures the sound of a thought coalescing.
[9]