Flo Rida ft. David Guetta–Club Can’t Handle Me

Released 28th June 2010.
Billboard: Peaked #9.
UK Charts: Peaked at #1.

The use of a featured artist can have a wide spectrum of results, needless to say. Sometimes, I find that the featured artist can complement the main artist very well, as in Nothin’ on You, and of course sometimes the featured artist serves to exacerbate things (well, I think Nicki Minaj did so in the already not-very-good Bottoms Up). In this song, our featured artist David Guetta seems nearly nonexistent, at least in the traditional sense of a featured artist to sing or rap a verse, a bridge, the chorus, or SOMETHING AT ALL… (other than being the producer, which I can figure).

As some people have mentioned, this song melody-wise is an electronic piece bearing some resemblance to, amazingly, Use Somebody. Honestly, I kind of like the instrumentals, and the hook isn’t all bad, if the lyrics leave some bits wanting (You know I know how… to make ‘em stop and stare as I zone out?!?!). And of course, as a DDR song, this one is a big winner, to say the least. Guetta’s production, though not groundbreaking, is highly serviceable and catchy.

Lyrically, though, this one seems bad in many, many ways, merely because it’s an insanely prideful celebration of one’s own ego. To use his own words – “Life of the club, arrogant like YEAH!”. Basically it’s pretty standard club-banger fare, with a pinch – or perhaps, several tablespoonsful – of pride added.

So in conclusion, this one’s actually musically not too bad, and actually showed some promise to begin with (the hook isn’t bad, honestly). However, Flo Rida’s rapping is somewhat questionable at times (the way he pronounces ridiculous, for one), and of course, those lyrics don’t help unless your song is 8.5 caliber or so.

OVERALL RATING = 5.0 / 10
Club Can’t Handle Me, to me, is a song that showed decent potential; David Guetta’s production is good, even if he didn’t match my expectations of what a featured artist is. However, questionable lyrical themes and noticeable lapses in Flo Rida’s rapping bring this to a pretty average level in the end.