The Singles Jukebox

Go Jukebox! Go Jukebox! Blurb ’em, Jukebox! Blurb ’em Jukebox!

[Video]
[7.10]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Punchline after punchline, read after read, hook after hook, no fat: just three talented titans at their tyrannical, terrifying peaks. 
[9]

TA Inskeep: Cardi joins Megan and Glo — clearly their spiritual daughter — for some real hot girl shit. The beat isn’t anything special, but when you’ve got spitters this hot on the track, I don’t care.
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: The addition of Cardi B turns what was a fun little collab into a putative Event Song, a burden that the midtempo sameness of the Soulja Boy sample is perhaps unequipped to take on. It’s a trunk rattler, sure, but it feels perpetually on the verge of starting and never going anywhere, much unlike the drop-centric “Pretty Boy Swag.” The upside of this rhythmic severity is that it makes it easier for the listener to pick out the pleasing stylistic contrasts here: the way GloRilla splays herself out across two whole bars just to remind us that a year has 365 days in it, whereas Cardi barks the words “pop ass on jet ski” like she’s avoiding a shot clock violation. Meg’s role is as the stabilizing force between these two extremes, which is maybe the first time in history that anyone’s referred to Megan Thee Stallion as a “stabilizing force.”
[6]

Katherine St. Asaph: These credits should really be in reverse order, to better represent the three rappers’ respective firepower here. 
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I’m filling out a Cardi B apology form after being down on “Miami” earlier this year — this verse is so good that when she gives herself a pep talk in the ad libs at the end it sounds deserved. Glo and Meg are also great, of course, and I’ll always be favorably inclined towards a rap hit that pays tribute to E-40, but the beat here lets the trio down — it creeps when it should at very least groove.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: I am going to repeat what a great black poet once said in regards to all my white colleagues in reference to Cardi B: Don’t save her; she don’t wanna be saved. (Megan and Glo are good on this, tho.)
[6]

Julian Axelrod: “Wanna Be” feels gloriously unmoored from time, as Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla play hot potato with the “Pretty Boy Swag” beat and shout out 2012 heartthrobs Channing Tatum and Justin Bieber. (To be fair, Channing has never looked better.) But in an era where guest verses are airdropped in from a tour bus several states away, the biggest throwback is their electric interplay on the chorus, which crackles with the kind of chemistry that can only be achieved by two baddies in the same room. Listening to them trade bars feels like walking into a conversation directly after the punchline; if you have to ask why they’re laughing, the joke is probably on you. Spare a thought for Cardi, who’s left to wander the empty space around them like Howard Hughes roaming his abandoned mansion. Hearing her root for herself on the outro after Meg and Glo finish hyping each other up is one of the most devastating depictions of third wheeling ever put to tape.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: The Soulja Boi flip is hot but the Project Pat flip is hotter. Glo is imperious (“Do I look like fuckin’ Super-Woman” she asks, incredulous), but Megan is commanding, running a sword through a million misguided fantasies with a cutting “You ain’t my daddy; I’m not your baby.” (Nice Gucci Mane call-back, too; the references here are laser-focused on the early Obama era.) This is a remix, so we get bonus Cardi material. Unlike Glo and Meg, she has to hype herself up at the end, which feels kinda bad, but she could never be a third wheel, not when she’s bringing fun phrasings like “hoes be chippity-chopped,” which rhymes, of course, with “hickory dickory dock.”
[8]

Ian Mathers: The original didn’t particularly feel like it was missing anything, but I’ll happily take Cardi’s fierce verse here for “my toes white like Matthew McConaughey” alone. And I’m not too proud to admit that at some point in the future I am absolutely going to refer to myself as “white boy wasted,” either.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Is Megan admitting to skiplagging? Megan, they’ll ban you from the airline!
[6]