The Singles Jukebox

It all keeps adding up…

[Video]
[6.38]

Alfred Soto: Tyler albums evaporate from my memory a week after praising them, so I’m prepared to do the same for “NOID” and its brethren. The self-production is dense, almost granitic: nobody’s getting in, Tyler included. 
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: I gave “Sicko Mode” a [3] when it first came out due to its disjointed structure and what I saw as its misaimed aspirations to prog-rock complexity; I was wrong, and would give it an [8] today. Maybe I’ll re-evaluate this song similarly some years from now, but I doubt it, given that “Sicko Mode” at least doesn’t wait until halfway through to develop a legible groove.
[4]

Mark Sinker: Spent enough of this autumn past thinking about the structures and decisions of classic mid-’70s prog to know what this is: a focused, quilted and layered mood-sketch of the named mind-state as seen from different angles (including his mom’s and also long-dead sampled Zamrock star Paul Ngozi’s). What it isn’t, I don’t think, is a single. 
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Here we have a tune that’s 50% sound collage by weight, wandering between Zam-rock choruses, heavy-psych guitars throwing their weight around, clips of disembodied voices snapping in and out of existence. The generous reading is that Tyler’s genre-mashing fearlessness has him putting together expansive, kaleidoscopic suites, in a way that none of his peers would dare; the less generous reading is that his penchant for showmanship has swelled up and pushed all else to the periphery. I’m split between the two. I would have been interested to hear more than, like, one and a half verses from the man himself, though.
[6]

Ian Mathers: It’s impressively bold that the video version of this just basically chops off the second half of the song (and a lot of strong material) but keeps all the impressively disjointed opening minute. For that minute I was like “maybe he’s just not going to rap” and was still impressed, but of course he does eventually. Both the full and truncated versions are definitely Making A Statement, the kind of thing that ought to get people interested in checking out Chromokopia. Does it have more Ngozi Family samples, though? Because those work ferociously well here.
[7]

Jel Bugle: Is it super creative, original and out there? Yes, I guess so. Do I want to hear it again? I don’t really think so. I liked the lady singing bits and the wibbly synths, but the rapping was my least favourite part. It’s just a bit too “album of the year” coded.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Craft imitating subject. Like Peter Gabriel’s “Intruder,” this sounds unidentifiably off in the context of its genre, and more so the more details one takes in: faint sirens and clipped voices hiding in the mix but not quite disappearing, percussion like shallow breaths then shallow breaths as percussion. Or maybe it’s like a time-displaced “Yonkers” where the years-old menace has caught back up to the music — which itself is a paranoia symptom.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: I hope anyone who has listened to and enjoyed this song could purchase a copy of The Ghetto and run through it. You’ll find even more bracing music than the paranoiac fantasies of a Nigerian man who has come into great wealth — which, to be fair, is actually a very good subgenre in both literature and music.
[9]