Craig David all over your [drug reference]…

[Video][Website]
[5.64]

Kat Stevens: There’s an icebox where his career used to be!
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Craig David is pioneer as much as punchline, but it’s the latter that’s the reputation, and it precedes him. “Cold” travels along both lines. Past the ones that travel back from R&BDM through Taio Cruz to Slicker Than Your Average, where sans bitterness this could just about sit as one of the weaker tracks, but also back through the ones marked “SILLY.” Maybe it’s not entirely fair, but he’s hard to take seriously, and putting lines like “cold-hearted and deranged like a killer chick from a movie” through his familiar quick-slow flow doesn’t help.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: Craig David tries to update himself for 2014, which is a bit of a shame; I could have done with hearing that UK garage two-step beat again. His voice is still silvery and he can wend it around a drum line like a wisp of smoke, but it’s not enough to turn what is so clearly a verse into a hook. At 0:18 when David starts on that “Cold-hearted and deranged…” bit again, the song deflates quicker than his syllables. First mention of this woman I’m interested; second time he brings up how nuts she is, I start wondering why he’s really so butthurt. A shame, as between all the stutters and Freon synth blasts, if this had been more carefully written it could have made for a compelling companion to Omarion’s sub-zero “Ice Box.”
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: It takes Craig David 30 seconds to stop hyperventilating and start explaining himself — I mean, she’s the broken record? Unless she’s literally torn your sides to literal ribbons, viscera dangling like one of those Halloween octopus costumes, then slow the fuck down, grab a beer, chill (ba dum tsh). David’s idea of “cold” is not so dramatic; it seems to be leaving after third base, or taking the initiative to kiss him (or being the FICKLE MUSIC BIZ, if you want to go down that road). My colleagues have called the proliferation of such songs sexist, but I never saw it that way. It’s the Willis Test again; “Cold” is a gender-flip of “Master Hunter,” and it doesn’t sound like it’s scolding but swaggering, a soundtrack to destruction — a literal soundtrack, to something like Under the Skin or Lucy, or an adaptation of The Robber Bride that starred Zenia. Those killer movie chicks would love this, put it to great use. Loud as she slo-mo punts a guy on the curb, bass swinging into place like sheaves of hair, or off a building. Soft — maybe a quarter the volume — as she lies on the cot in her room, dull-eyedly reliving her conquest, nails bent from habit: vaguely remorseful, vaguely antsy. It is a certain sort of empowering to cauterize yourself.
[7]

Crystal Leww: “Cold” came out a little over three weeks ago, so I went through Craig David’s Greatest Hits album. Now I’ve spent the last three weeks unable to listen to much else besides Craig David. I always forget how diverse and excellent his discography is, particularly the hits! Dude was probably a little ahead of the curve when it comes to EDM pop while receiving none of the credit for it, so there’s some sort of cruel irony that he’s here talking about MDMA after rap music and EDM finished it off. Still, “Cold” fits seamlessly in the Craig David hits. David’s a chameleon, and his voice even works in something as crowded and cloudy production-wise as this is. I love it all: the repeated and pitch shifted colds, the record scratches and wind downs, and most of all, Craig David harmonizing with himself. I’m glad he’s back.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Is Craig taking his cues from accidentally listening to two Usher songs at once?
[5]

Will Adams: Craig David’s warm but meaty timbre has been sorely missed — on “Cold,” it’s bolstered by the vocoded backing and the grinding bassline. The electronic flourishes keeps this from being a stock standard R&B number.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: I remember a time when Craig David felt like the future of pop, when he came in riding the wave of UK garage. Now he sounds like he’s chasing Jason DeRulo’s dollars. And did he really refer to a woman as “like a hit of MDMA”? This sounds instantly dated — the bad record-scratching effects don’t help — and limp as wet paper towels. 
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: Imagine if your uncle learned about “popped a molly I’m sweatin’.” That’s Craig David singing “like a hit of MDMA” on this yawner.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Catchy and smooth — no getting around it. But the sentiments are so worn and the hysteria in David’s tone so unnecessary that the song amounts to a war crime fit to be adjudicated at The Hague.
[3]

Mark Sinker: So you’re sitting in a bar and the fellow next to you — who you totally don’t know — is talking a something-enhanced whirlwind at you, half-digested and contradictory analogies tumbling out and over one another as he tries to frame his problems for you, with his work, with his life, with this girl he may or may not have bedded/met/imagined… No idea in art richer than the unreliable narrator, of course, and music has warehouses full of ways to set this up, some more conscious than others. For example: any level of Michael Jacksonism in others now has you looking at them a little awry — and CD’s here is a superb high-speed virtuoso babble of himself as several MekaJackos sliding across into one another. You finish your drink and find reasons to edge away…  
[8]