The Singles Jukebox

Yeah, you wait 4 us, bros.

[Video]
[4.71]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: After Encanto soundtrack singles and Glass Animals nonsense topped the Billboard Hot 100 for most of March and April, it’s great to see the music world finally find the script again. Reflectiveness is always a a great look for Future, and Drake manages to sounds sympathetic for the first time in ages. The real star here, of course, is Tems, who earns that #1 with a vocal so tender that the rest of the song just floats away. 
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: Tems is one of the most important singers of the last 20 years, and this would be a 10 if the song I was writing about was “Damages.” Instead a bland Future takes up time while Drake is completely pointless and just reminds you that he’s uncompelling unless he’s hurting and undermining somebody who cares for him. So this is a 6 cuz Drake and Future are boring and uninteresting but not bad and laughable. 
[4]

Ian Mathers: Tems deserves better rappers on this track.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: In a pop landscape dominated by boring, incompetent mega-hits, Future’s extreme competence in boring hitmaking stands out as something to be admired. “Wait for U” is extremely tasteful, Tems’ sampled hook an artfully staged marble statue that Future and Drake do restrained aristocrat romantic soliloquies around. It’s a Sting song for the modern era, for better and for worse.
[7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: I can only assume Future and Drake cranked this out in ten minutes when they realized they still hadn’t done anything with this beat yet and they both had flights to catch, because the level of pure, mindless disinterest is galling. I’ll agree with Future that the beat is almost supernaturally striking, but that makes it all the more disappointing that neither he nor Drake are connecting with it. Their flows never sound in step with the percussion — which Drake’s boring, repetitive delivery renders even more obvious — and the prominence given to Tems’ vocals leaves them constantly trying to dodge her interjections. The only even mildly memorable line is an unfunny reference to “In My Feelings”. I’d rather just listen to Tems’ original.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: GQ recently, hilariously named Future “the best rapper alive.” Influential? Absolutely — he may have done more to ruin hip hop in the past decade, apart from his buddy Drake, than anyone. But he’s barely a rapper, instead featuring that mush-mouthed sing-talk technique he loves, and always but always Auto-tuned into oblivion. That’s on full display here; Drake is rapping, albeit whining about women as. he. always. is. Sure, this is vaguely melodic, but to what end?
[2]

Alfred Soto: The inertia on display must have been willed. While Future and Drake match mumble for mumble, Tems offers an approximation of soul in what sounds like a bus station after midnight. Not unpleasant, not not unpleasant.
[5]