The Singles Jukebox

You’re the only fivepointsixseven I see…

[Video]
[5.67]

Julian Axelrod: If you showed me the phrase “Tennessee by Kevin Abstract and Lil Nas X” in 2019, I’d have a pretty clear idea of what it would sound like: a raucous, rowdy take on queer country soaked in tequila and self-conscious irony. But five years and a million stylistic pivots later, it sounds like even these two don’t know what sound they’re trying to achieve. All the humor and charisma of their past work has been drained out in favor of… a limp line about genealogy? Water-logged Devstacks strings? A guest verse that sounds like Lil Nas X is committed to hitting the minimum word count and not a syllable more? I’m all for maturity and artistic evolution, but this feels like a comedic actor taking a dramatic role and begging, nay, daring you to take them seriously. If Kevin’s going to officially release a song from his Coachella set, it should be Sky Ferreira’s cover of “Need You Now.”
[5]

Alfred Soto: We need songs about guys cruising gyms, and BROCKHAMPTON’S ringleader and this decade’s most florid star are the ones for the job. Why does “Tennessee” run out of song in its last minute?
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Learning that Romil was involved in this little gem is a delight. Quadeca and Devstacks both share credits with him, and there’s loping, bouncy drum programming that bubbles to life as synths swirl to surround Kevin. His still very anonymous tenor struggles to carry the song to life before dropping a haymaker (“I just know that I love being used as long as it makes me feel loved”) and disappearing into a sweeping, bizarro-world version of Frank. Lil Nas sweeps in to remind Kevin that the latter is like Kool G Rap, and just like in that fantastic video where the young Big Nas and the elder Kool G trade bars, the young’n has the better verse and the better career prospect. Kevin better get used to playing the back — it’s one role he plays well.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: I guess we don’t currently have Frank Ocean at home.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: The synth storm overwhelms both rappers, both of whose presence is more agreeable than memorable. That’s particularly concerning in the case of Lil Nas X, whom I didn’t even notice on the track until my third listen or so. He’s never been a rapper who brings actual bars to a track, but he’s usually good for spectacle. Here’s he’s overshadowed by Kevin Abstract’s Dune puns.
[5]

Aaron Bergstrom: Kevin Abstract loves it that you don’t know your ancestry. Lil Nas X isn’t interested in your old lovers and relations. The past has no meaning here, and to prove it the two artists trade verses over an achingly wistful track that pulls off the neat trick of creating a frozen present moment that seems pre-nostalgic for itself.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: The strange fetishization of rootlessness makes more sense when you consider that every artist involved here, including the producer Quadeca, is an “internet rapper” in the mostly non-pejorative sense. If Genius is to be believed, even the line “I love my phone, that’s my device” is a reference to an Instagram post by Jane Remover, bringing us to hypercubic levels of Too Online. To be cut off from one’s ancestral past is usually presented as a tragedy, but here it correlates with self-invention, blank slates, the eradication of borders and prejudices and other dusty concepts from the Hacker Manifesto. A fragile kind of utopia, and both performers seem aware of this — those “past lovers and relations” don’t disappear just because we wish them to. Yet the allure of that utopianism has never fully dimmed, as shown by Kevin Abstract’s willingness to lightly debase his own lyricism in order to give himself over to a grander, more spontaneous vision. “Tennessee” doesn’t preach the gospel of cringe as hyperpop and its sister genres do, but it does have a native fluency in cringe, accepting it as the price of entry for communicating to another just who “all of me” really is.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Ever been so mutually horny with someone you get a headrush like the edible just hit? Yeah, it’s nice.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: All of this just to refrain from making a “ten I see” joke? What happened to decency?
[4]