So I’m the only one upset this isn’t a Spoon interpolation?

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Madeleine Lee: I love listening to Rap Monster. I love his obvious joy in and command of language. It’s more than just wordplay — he’s not the only Korean rapper who can make a pun, but where another language-proficient rapper like Olltii can sound as dense as a textbook in his verses, Rap Monster recognizes that words are also sounds, and that this dimension of them can have just as much impact. He knocks his syllables against the “Aerosol Can” beat, which similarly delights in sound, cycling through flows and voices with ease, never sounding out of breath even when he slows down. The text of “Do You” is yet another treatise on authenticity, as one writes nowadays if one is in an idol group but also wants to be taken seriously as a rapper. But where Rap Monster’s past verses on this topic have been blustery and too defensive (“We On”), or agonized diary entries about the spectrum/spectre of authenticity (his version of Drake’s “Too Much”), “Do You” is relaxed in sound and in philosophy. “I’m doing my thing, so you do yours” is effective as a dismissal in a song where he really is just doing his thing, and well.
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Alfred Soto: The bubblelicious production reminded me of Le1f’s “Wut,” but the multitracked vocal and clean, well-lighted mix are his own achievements. Now he has to figure out what he wants to say.
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Micha Cavaseno: “Ima Read” through a Korean filter bristling with energy and blurting into Joey Lawrence goofiness. It bangs in a nervous hyperventilation sort of way.
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Patrick St. Michel: The understated beat is fantastic and it opens up by calling out self-help books. Nice. I’m giving this a bonus point because it apparently calls A$AP Rocky and Kanye “geezers” which is funny and ballsy.
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Brad Shoup: Only once does he lose the plot: when he sticks “best-seller” at the end of a line and screws up the rhyme scheme. Otherwise, he’s got the cadence of a turn-of-the-century American feature, just stretched out over an entire song. That sounds grating, but he breaks things up with the first commandment: “do you.” Oh, and the whole thing’s done over a Books-alike track: melodic percussion and crisp musique concrète.
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Edward Okulicz: It took a look at a translation for me to realise that the title is an imperative, not a question, but that’s my fault, not Rap Monster’s. The sound effects of the shaking and spraying of a can seem to fit well with the mood of the song — it’s a statement of intent as large and bold as a huge tag on a wall. Rap Monster himself is imposing and impressive over this beyond-minimal beat, though it feels like he’s less clever and nimble when he drops briefly into English. Might be that when he does this I count cliches as crutches the track doesn’t need, whereas his native tongue just sounds relentless and commanding. Would love to hear this dropped in a club with the lights nearly off.
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Thomas Inskeep: I do not expect a K-Pop star to make, of all things, a hip-hop single this menacing. I should’ve known better, though, because K-Pop groups are known for being plenty harder than their US or UK counterparts. The track feels overall like an early Pharrell cut (circa N.E.R.D., or thanks to its spray-paint-can sample, Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot”), only darker: Rap Monster spends a bunch of the chorus asking “what the fuck you want?!” The way he effortlessly flips back and forth from Korean to English and back reminds me of peak-era reggaeton stars like Daddy Yankee. Goddamn, this is tough, and sensationally good, and out to prove a point it proves easily. One of 2015’s best singles. 
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