Chris Brown–Up To You

Not a single, but F.A.M.E. was released on 18th March 2011.
Billboard: –
UK: –

After a bunch of singles that ranged from weak (No BS, Deuces) to well, okay (Look At Me Now, Yeah 3X I guess, Beautiful People) and perhaps decent (Next 2 You) I decided to check out a few of the other tracks on Chris Brown’s new album. Up To You was a standout for me.

This is more my kind of thing, really. In terms of instrumentation and production, for some reason I was really reminded of Usher’s U Got It Bad. The slow, more traditional approach works here as it did on Usher’s song (they’re not about the same thing, but the idea of relative passivity is maintained across both songs). As a piece to listen to, Up To You is a pretty decent one (I do have an objection though: the awkward use of the swear-word to open the verses is unnecessary; while justifiable it doesn’t ring so well in the ears). The bridge and choruses are done well, I’d think. I like the (I’ve made so many tears, I don’t wanna make no, make no more) part.

Like most 2011 pop songs, there ARE lyrical deficiencies, unfortunately;

(Verse 2)
What the hell babe
Make me wanna jump out an airplane

Eh? It doesn’t help that I’m made to recall B.o.B’s Airplanes and Tyler The Creator’s Yonkers when presented with this kind of lyric. Perhaps the wtf-ness of this is attempted to be justified in the next line (The way it feels, I just can’t explain) so I can semi-buy this, but it’s a very strange idea for love, I find. It’s introduced out of nowhere, really.

(Bridge)
I’ve made so many tears I don’t wanna make no, make no more
So give me your list, yes I’m checking things off
Ready to go to work, baby you can be boss

Comparing love to what would presumably be a to-do list isn’t my idea of a romantic gesture. Yes, Acts of Service is a love language, but I still find such a comparison awkward. Given that work is frequently associated with the notion of a daily grind and being separate from play or pleasure (though they CAN be found together, for many people they’re not), I’m not so sure comparing devotion to work is the best idea as well.

Not to mention the grammatical error – ‘baby you can be the boss’ would be better.

Nevertheless, the general approach behind the song works for me. Perhaps I’m a little idealistic, but I do often enjoy songs where the singer/persona takes on a lower-key approach, learns, develops and grows, and Up To You definitely does have such elements. (It could also be because the Billboard charts are so frequently filled with either hostile a la F**k You, Rolling in the Deep, vapid e.g. Just Can’t Get Enough or Down on Me, deceptive like Born this Way or bad such as Tonight, The Lazy Song material – not that the former two categories are bad, but it can be tiring to listen to such songs too frequently.) As far as I’m concerned, it’s a clear pass and a decent song – though it doesn’t quite match up to Usher’s U Got It Bad which for me seems to be, in terms of sound, pretty similar. Probably Brown’s best off F.A.M.E., though also a far cry from his best (for me, that would have to go to Say Goodbye). It’s very, very solid though.

OVERALL SCORE = 7.5 / 10
Up To You eschews Brown’s recent shifts towards rap and high-energy dance tracks, going with a more traditional R&B approach. For me, it works well. While there are a few small lyrical deficiencies, the message is a nice, positive one and the instrumentation works well to support the message, as does Brown’s singing. Please don’t remind me of the airplane, though.

Chris Brown ft. Busta Rhymes and Lil Wayne–Look At Me Now

Released February 01, 2011.
Billboard: #11
UK Charts: –

Posse raps can be interesting, as you get to hear a little slice of each individual’s style. For example, on the remix of Brown’s Deuces, from hearing their voice I could pick out Drake, TI, Kanye and Andre3000 easily without needing to see the list of featured artists. When I first saw the concept on paper – Chris Brown ft. Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes, I figured it’d be an R&B track, possibly with some extended rap features. I was wrong.

However, I had heard him do a rap section (feature, actually) on Chipmunk’s Champion, in addition to his semi-shouting part on Yeah 3X; now I think about it actually quite a number of R&B singers are doing semi-crossovers (Trey Songz put his own take on Look At Me Now, and Ne-Yo opens One In A Million with some rapping). So I wasn’t too surprised…

Unlike Forever where all four of them had their strengths going for them, the aforementioned Deuces remix where all could be contenders, or perhaps even the depressingly weak yet somewhat egalitarian (bad) nature of Bedrock, this is one of the most one-sided ones I have ever seen, to put it bluntly.

#1 CHRIS BROWN

I don’t see how you can hate from outside of the club
You can’t even get in
Hahaha, leggo

Heh, the lyrics are obnoxious, as is the laugh. Anyway, that was just some random intro bit, so we should get down to the real content of his verse. I

Yellow model chick, yellow bottle sippin’
Yellow Lamborghini, yellow top missin’

Okay… This reminds me of Wiz Khalifa’s song about a car as well (Black And Yellow). Though my critical mind thinks Black And Yellow is bad as a song, I find it pretty catchy as harmless entertainment. The sheer ridiculousness of some parts of the song made it more humorous than anything – which may be a good thing.

That shit look like a toupee
I get what you get in 10 years, in two days

If I earned $10000 a month, I would get approximately $1.2 million in 10 years, not including bonuses. Let’s take the bonus as 1 month so that’s $1,320,000 in 10 years. In 2 days would mean that you earn… $241 million a year. True, that’s not impossible, but I believe that kind of level was surpassed only by Oprah for 2010. Even the top earning popstar, Beyonce clocked in at $87M, a little over one third of that. Pretty ambitious there, eh?

Ladies love me; I’m on my Cool J
If you get what I get, what would you say?
She wax it all off, Mr. Miyagi

No issues, no comments here.

And them suicide doors, hari-kari

LAZY rhyming. The term for suicide is hari kiri… Well, I guess it isn’t too bad that he gets his words on timing most of the time. 3.0 / 10

HOOK – CHRIS BROWN

Look at me now, look at me now
Oh, I’m getting paper
Look at me now, oh, look at me now
Yeah, fresher than a muff(??)

I can’t seem to hear the dirty word that this is supposed to end with. Anyway, could you sing something? At least I sort of liked his oversinging on Champion… He’s a singer first, a dancer up there as well, and a rapper maybe 20th. 4.0 / 10

#2 CHRIS BROWN

Lil nigga, bigger than gorilla
Cause I’m killing every nigga that can try to be on my shit
Better cuff your chick if you with her, I can get her
And she accidentally slip and fall on my dick

Heh, how incredulous (accidentally? It shouldn’t be exposed at all!). He’s trying a bunch of 16th note syllables here, and it’s at least kinda nice to listen to.

Oops, I said on my dick
I ain’t really mean to say on my dick
But since we talking about my dick
All of you haters say hi to it

Suck it, huh? As again, I somehow feel he’s not really trying at least in terms of lyric-writing here.

I’m done.

Well, I hope that was some fun experimentation, but please return to a main singing role in your songs. It wasn’t really terrible, but you can do much better. 4.0 / 10

#3 BUSTA RHYMES

Ayo Breezy, let me show you how to keep the dice rolling when you’re doing that thing over there homie

Yeah. He only did it for around four bars or so. Let’s do this!

Let’s GO!

I’m pumped. That sounds somewhat like Tinie Tempah’s signature before he starts his songs, though…

Cause I feel like I’m running
And I’m feeling like I gotta get away, get away, get away…

This is what I mean by fast. I remember in Forever that Eminem one-upped the others in terms of speed, rapping:

He’s wondering if he should spit this slow
Fuck no! Go for broke,
His cup just runneth over, oh no

You sure about this…? Forever was 158 BPM with a small bunch of 16th triplets. For the most part he’s just doing 8th notes at 158 BPM which a simple calculation would show to be 158 x 2 / 60,or around 5.27 syllables per second. Look At Me Now is only 146, but Busta goes mainly on the sixteenths. In other words, that is (146 x 4 / 60) or 9.73 syllables per second. Following the rappers on Forever would make for a somewhat hard song on DDR; but, Look At Me Now could easily be a boss song that would make Forever look like peanuts.

I’m not going to bother going through the lyrics. It’s fairly standard fare about pushing for the top in spite of haters, rebutting them, etc. Normally, songs that succeed for me do so on the intellectual level a la All of the Lights which I just wrote about; yet this is an example of serious technical proficiency. Good job. It’s the main part of the song which I can put on repeat. Heh looks like it’d be worth it for me to check out more of the guy’s work. This could be pop-slanted though relative to the rest of his work – somehow, like Raekwon’s verse on Runaway Love with Kanye West and Justin Bieber I get this feeling. Nevertheless, he’s very good. 8.0 / 10

Sheesh. This means the expectations are going to be VERY, VERY high for the next person up…

#4 LIL WAYNE

Man, fuck these bitch ass niggas, how y’all doin’?
I’m Lil Tunechi, I’m a nuisance, I go stupid, I go dumb like the Three Stooges
I don’t eat sushi, I’m the shit, no, I’m pollution, no substitution
Got a bitch that play in movies in my jacuzzi, pussy juicy

A porn star. I get it.

Seriously, most of this is also just standard fare about rising to the top and rebutting haters, so I don’t see much point in going through the lines. I’ll just point out the more interesting or uncertain bits.

You niggas ain’t eatin’, fuck it, tell a waiter
Marley said shoot ‘em, and I said okay
If you wanted bullshit then I’m like olé

Don’t quite get this bit. Who is Marley? I’ve heard it’s Wayne’s bodyguard, but still… isn’t this inappropriate especially given that he was just incarcerated for weapon possession?!

I don’t care what you say, so don’t even speak
Your girlfriend a freak like Cirque du Soleil

Ah ha! Like this. She must be a mad contortionist, probably. Nice one there.

Ciroc and Sprite on a private flight, bitch I been tight since Guiding Light

I learned that it (Guiding Light)’s apparently the longest running television drama (from 1975), and someone on rapgenius also commented that it could be a double entendre for God and Light. Nevertheless, going by this idea I don’t see a need for such reading anyway, since Guiding Light in and of itself, without changing the words, could also be an allusion to God, who was around since the beginning of time.

He isn’t bad. However, it’s hard to clear the bar that Busta set in his verse, and from what I see, Wayne doesn’t do it. Nevertheless, this is credibly okay. 5.5 / 10

And of course, the winner for me is Busta, hands down. Lil Wayne is good, but I think it’d be better if he throws in more of those interesting, witty couplets, or at least those that would make me smile amusedly. Brown should stick to singing, really.

OVERALL SCORE = 6.0 / 10
This is a rather unusual case where some elements of the song are excellent and others seem inherently flawed. I settled on a 6, as the hook while not good isn’t terrible, and the featured artists do their job more than satisfactorily (Lil Wayne), if not excellently (Busta). It’s pretty catchy, but probably could have been more cohesive if Brown used a more traditional pattern (e.g. Brown sings or raps v1, and sings the hook rather than just goes Look at me now, Look at me now. Wayne fires v2 and Busta does the bridge or vice versa). Nevertheless, I do respect Busta’s technical proficiency. I’d listen to the song for that part, really.

Bruno Mars–Grenade

Released September 28, 2010.
Billboard: #2 (but does have a chance of #1)
UK: Not released yet

Ah. This one has a strong theme and is, in my opinion, way ahead of Just The Way You Are at least in terms of how the music goes – the lyrics, I’ll talk about that later, though given that Just The Way You Are was painfully brutal in this aspect, I think Grenade is an improvement too. The music video is pretty effective; the piano-pulling story is sad, and the rain visuals work well.

He’s one strong vocalist, too. The lines like I would go through all this pain – take a BULLet straight through my brain aren’t exactly easy to sing, and he pulls them off quite nicely. That oscillating drumline in the background works well to highlight his singing. Musically, I have no complaints.

Unfortunately, like Beat Again, this one suffers from bad lyrics too. While this may partially be my opinion since I can’t say I’ve really fallen (romantically) for anyone yet, the intended poignancy of the lyricism becomes incredibly illogical.

Easy come, easy go
That’s just how you live – oh
Take, take, take it all, but you never give
Should’ve known you was trouble from the first kiss
Had your eyes wide open – why were they open?

Firstly, how would you know? Unless you were inspecting HER eyes too… But other than that verse 1 is okay.

Gave you all I had and you tossed it in the trash, you tossed it in the trash – you did
To give me all your love was all I ever asked, cause what you don’t understand is –

I like this pre-chorus part… he handles the melody very well. So, let’s go to the chorus:

I would catch a grenade for you (yeah, yeah)
Throw my hand on a blade for you (yeah – yeah)
I’d jump in front of a train for you (yeah – yeah) – !!!
You know I’d do anything for you (yeah – yeah) ooohhh
I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain – oh-kay, this is getting disturbing.
Yes, I would die for you baby – but you won’t do the same

And you know it… So I guess he must have fallen deeply in love. However, to have dropped to this extent just seems disturbing. It seems kind of unlikely that jumping in front of a train would save her too, if you needed to physically rescue her – both of you would die, right?

Verse 2:
Black, black, black and blue, beat me till I’m numb
Tell the Devil I said “hey” when you get back to where you’re from
Mad woman, bad woman, that’s just what you are, yeah
You’ll smile in my face then rip the brakes out my car – ???

I actually like the second line, pretty witty there. Sadly, though, the last line makes little sense if we consider the music video. There is no car. I understand it’s just meant to be an aggressive action… Seems like an excuse to rhyme with “are”, unfortunately.

Bridge:
If my body was on fire, ooh
You’d watch me burn down in flames – This reminds me of something…
You said you loved me, you’re a liar – He doesn’t love the way she lies.
Cause you never, ever, ever did baby…

Pretty well done, too… though is the girl really that terrible? From the music video, she only dumped him, so I can’t say very much. Even if the rest of what’s mentioned in the song is true (being calculating from the first kiss, ripping the brakes out his car) this seems like a pretty dangerous inference to make.

The video ends in a scary way, with Mars dragging the piano, and a truck approaches him, and it cuts to black. Oh dear…

All in all, despite the numerous lyrical flaws in it, I think Grenade is a good pop song. The atmospheric effect of the drums contributes significantly to the song, and of course Mars’ vocals are smooth. This seems a bit of an antonym song to Just The Way You Are, though – one song about extreme joy over love, and one about extreme heartbreak.

Wait – some artists thread a few songs to tell a story; I can remember that for Ne-Yo, other than the Libra Scale series, Part of the List and Mad told a coherent story, too. Of course, Kanye West’s Runaway video also featured quite a few songs. Could Grenade be Just The Way You Are’s successor? After all, her eyes made the stars look like they’re not shining, so they were BRIGHT and WIDE, perhaps? He was pretty much blinded – So don’t even bother asking if you look okay / You know what I’d say! 

OVERALL SCORE = 6.5 / 10
Grenade is a well-executed pop song about heartbreak that unfortunately has lyrics which seem over-the-top and excessively dramatic. Bruno Mars’ execution is excellent, nonetheless.

JLS–Beat Again

Released 12 July 2009.
Billboard: NA
UK: #1.

If I review this as a reality-show-winners’ (though they actually got 2nd place) single, this on first glance looks excellent. This song is has a pretty workable R&Bish, danceable sound to it, and is probably quite a bit more memorable than almost every other reality-show-winners’ or second place singles that I can remember (off the top of my head, I can only remember Kelly Clarkson’s A Moment Like This, and… Bleeding Love, though that was actually Leona Lewis’ second single, after she covered A Moment Like This, and also partly because of Eurovision, Tom Dice’s Me And My Guitar which is also his second single after HE covered Bleeding Love!). The blue-red-green-yellow backing theme on the CD cover looks pretty nice too.

In terms of sound, the song’s a pretty harmless piece and actually quite nice to listen to; it’s not bad for casual listening. The little electro effects e.g. tune out at beginning of 2nd verse are decent, and the chorus is pretty catchy too. The bridge sounds pretty good and the ending part is nice too – all in all, it’s a reasonably refined, if standard kind of work.

However, this is not a sing I can sing at all, much like BedRock – though unlike BedRock, which I can’t sing because I would utterly laugh while failing to sing Call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock, this one is more an issue of disgust than humour.

Damn
The doctor’s just finished telling me there’s no time
Losing you could be the end of me, and that I
Should do the things that I wanna do, how could I
Without you without you ooh ooh

In terms of cheese, this one destroys Replay completely, I think – the idea of death should one’s lover leave one is quite a bad one, I think. It seems that the persona in the song shows elements of calculated emotional blackmail too… Let’s look at the chorus.

Let’s just get back together, we should’ve never broke up
They’re telling me that my heart wont beat again
We should have stayed together, cause when you left me it stopped
They’re telling me that my heart wont beat again
Won’t beat again
Its killing me…

This is where the problem of mixing the idea of the heart as a muscle supporting the body’s functions, and as a centre of emotions and feelings comes in. If your heart stopped when she left you, she couldn’t have left you for very long, and besides it’d be nigh impossible to sing a 3:21 (or so) song. I wouldn’t really complain about this normally – the idea of having one’s heart stop can figuratively mean a shock of some sort, but the use of the doctor at the beginning of verse 1 makes it a problem, the mention of “love CPR” in the bridge, and most scarily, the sheer spookiness of verse 2:

If I died, yeah would you come to my funeral?
Would you cry?
Would you feel some regret that we didn’t try?
Or would you fall apart the same as I
And would it always haunt you baby that you missed your chance to save me?
Cos you know its not too late
(Hey hey heeeeeey)

Ouch. It’s downright disturbing.

OVERALL SCORE = 5.5 / 10
For a reality-talent-show group, I cannot deny that JLS has put forth a musically strong first effort with Beat Again. I find the song reasonably well constructed and catchy; it’s pleasing as a casual listen, but the incredibly questionable lyrics knock this one down a point or two.

Young Money ft. Lloyd–BedRock

Released November 14, 2009 (US), March 22, 2010 (UK)
Billboard: Peaked at #2.
UK Charts: Peaked at #9.

Well, this one’s a collaboration from Young Money Entertainment, which I believe was initiated by Lil Wayne and is basically a label for hip-hop artists, mostly rappers. Other than Lil Wayne, I do know that Drake and Nicki Minaj are signed to this, as well as Tyga (one of the guys featured on Chris Brown’s Deuces). All four of them are featured in this song, along with Lloyd, and two other rappers on the label – Jae Millz and, um, Gudda Gudda. I do enjoy quite a bit of Drake’s work, Lil Wayne is okay, and Nicki Minaj’s work is all over the place; so it’ll be interesting to see how this massive collaboration turns out.

As I suspected, it’s basically a collection of rap verses by each artist, with Lloyd handling the chorus. The beat is… there, I guess, and it’s reasonably catchy, so no marks penalised there. Lloyd’s hook as well as the background instrumentals are pretty decent in terms of melody, and though his voice does seem a little shaky at times, it’s nothing too bad. However, the problem with this hook is the lyrics –

Oh Baby, I be stuck to you, like glue, baby
Wanna spend it all on you, baby
My room is the G-spot,
Call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock
I-I-I-I can make your bed rock (x4)

I still wonder how he can sing this without exploding into laughter. The glue metaphor in the first line or the idea of using money to buy love in the second line are a little bit over-the-top, but nothing too ridiculous. Third line… G as in gangsta, but also G-spot refers to a theorised erogeneous zone in the vaginal area, which sounds a bit… disturbing, to say the least. The last two lines are the clincher here though – seriously? Call me Mr. Flintstone… I can make your bed rock… How do you NOT laugh while singing these lines?!? The corniness is pretty extreme. The I-I-I-I reminds me of a certain other song that used this little vocal pattern as well, too…

Anyway, enough about Lloyd, he’s basically pretty generic on this, not especially bad, but not especially good either. The six rappers on the song:

#1 LIL WAYNE
She got that good good, she Michael Jackson bad,
I’m attracted to her, for her attractive ass.
Right… That’s, well, … explicit? Argh!

And now we murderers, because we kill time;
I knock her lights out, and she still shine.
This is cliched, but not as bad as above…

I hate to see her go, but I love to watch her leave,
But I keep her running back and forth – Soccer Team
Um, okay. This reminds me of Katy Perry’s Hot n Cold… a case of love bipolar….

Cold as a winter’s day, hot as a summer’s eve
I figured.

Young Money thieves, steal your love and leave
Ah well, this opener is pretty much of a sleeper, really. He’s not too bad, other than the second line. Still, I was expecting more… I was left with very little impression, whether for good or for bad (other than THAT second line). 4/10

#2 GUDDA GUDDA
I like the way you walk and if you walking my way
I’m that Red Bull, now let’s fly away
Okay, Red Bull gives you wings, and all that. Pass.

Let’s buy a place with all kind of space
I let you be the judge and-and-and I’m the case
Not really making much sense here to me…

I’m Gudda Gudda, I put her under
I see me with her, no Stevie Wonder
Okay, so I did some research and “no Stevie Wonder” has similar meaning to “no wonder”. I guess it sort of makes sense once you remove it. That said, care to explain the choice of Gudda Gudda?

She don’t even wonder ’cause she know she bad
And I got her n—–,
Hmm…

GROCERY BAG
Research shows this to mean “it’s in the bag”, which makes sense considering the context of this lyric. Nevertheless, said “research” is a little page on Urban Dictionary, and it came out on Jun 9, 2010, after two posts above (and before) it that puts forth definitions that basically imply “this line is nonsense”, unfortunately. Thus it’s possible that the definition came about because someone figured out that Grocery Bag implied “it’s in the bag”. Speaking of this, I’d best have a look at when the definition on Urban Dictionary came out for “no Stevie Wonder”… Dec 15, 2009, and it’s tagged with “lil wayne”, “bedrock” and “young money”. Hmm, there’s little data outside that to corroborate, so it’s probably another nonsense phrase or name-dropping usage. 1.5/10

#3 NICKI MINAJ
Okay, I get it, let me think, I guess it’s my turn
Maybe it’s time to put this p—- on your sideburns
Rrrrrright. Okay… This is ten times worse than Lil Wayne’s “attractive ass” line…

He say I’m bad, he probably right
He pressing me like button downs on a Friday night
Nothing special here, a bit of a sleeper.

I’m so pretty like, me on my pedal bike
Be on my low starch, be on my egg-a whites
How to lose weight! Ah well, points for referencing the Atkins Diet, I guess. I wonder why the change of inflection for “low starch”, though. Is there something that special about it?

He say, “Nikki, don’t stop, you the bestest”
And I just be coming off the top, asbestos
Asbestos? Isn’t that some volcanic material? This definitely needs research.

From wikipedia, “Asbestos (from Greek ἄσβεστος meaning “unquenchable” or “inextinguishable”) is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals exploited commercially for their desirable physical properties.”

Apparently, it used to be used a lot in construction, with applications such as gaskets, stage curtains, and (probably what we’re concerned with here), ceilings. However modern regulations have placed limits on the use of asbestos for health reasons. So… I still don’t get it. What’s coming off the top? Surely you don’t want yourself removed, for public health (noise) reasons, so…?

A little bit of research suggests a double entendre – improvisation (coming off the top of one’s head), and well, orgasm (off… a different kind of top, to say the least). Hmm… Not enjoyable, at all. 3/10

#4 DRAKE
Ah this should be interesting, some of his songs are pretty decent to good, and his spot on What’s My Name with Rihanna was decent.

I love your sushi roll, hotter than wasabi
I race for your love, “Shake ‘n’ Bake” Ricky Bobby
Okay. This is fine, but nothing special…

I’m at the W but I can’t meet you in the lobby
Girl, I gotta watch my back ’cause I’m not just anybody
I like those slightly faster bits here – his diction’s pretty enjoyable, honestly.

I seen ’em stand in line just to get beside her
I let her see the Aston and let the rest surprise her
That’s when we disappear, you need GPS to find her
Oh, that was your girl? I thought I recognized her
Ironically, the last song I reviewed was Run It!, and I mentioned these lyrics in it too. Ah well, though he’s being a bad guy, this verse is still done pretty well and is definitely a breath of fresh air after one disappointing and two pretty bad verses. 6/10

#5 TYGA
She like tanning, I like staying in
She like romancing, I like rolling with friends
She said I’m caged in, I think her conscience is
She watching that Oxygen, I’m watching ESPN
List of seeming antonyms (that aren’t necessarily antonyms), zzz. It’s decent; I sort of like his rap voice, but it’s still very much a sleeper.

But when that show end, she all on my skin
Lotion, slow motion, roller coasting like back forth, hold it (hold it – hold it – …)
She pose like it’s for posters and I poke like I’m supposed to
Take this photo if you for me, she said, “Don’t you ever show this”
There’s really not much I have to say about Tyga’s section. It’s neither really good nor really bad, but actually that still makes it one of the better ones in this song. Depiction of basically, sex.

I’m too loyal and too focused
To be losing and be hopeless, when I spoke this, she rejoiced it
Said your words get me open, so I closed it
This doesn’t sound too good… I mean, do you seriously expect someone like, well, anyone on the Young Money crew to settle down so easily? Heh…

Where your clothes is? I’m only loving for the moment
Ah yup. Predictable, and explainable. 4.5/10

#6 JAE MILLZ
Uh, she ain’t got a man but she’s not alone
Miss Independent, yeah, she got her own
Ne-Yo references there? Ah well, I like Ne-Yo, so you can have a few points from me.

Hey gorgeous, I mean flawless, well, that’s what you are
How I see it is how I call it, yeah
Look it how she walk, she know she bad
Do, do your thing, baby, I ain’t even mad
Okay, this one is not taken in context. He’s… not bad, which is actually pretty good for this song. At least, his lyrics flow pretty okay, and though simple, make sense and are tinged with a bit of sweetness.

And I ain’t even fast, I’ma stay a while
Hold yo’ head Chris, I’ma take her down
A Chris Brown reference, probably… but it’s left undeveloped. Are you gunning for Rihanna? Which shouldn’t make sense – I don’t see a reason why you’d want to do that. More likely, it’s a reference to Take You Down, which has little to do with violence and is more about, to put it bluntly, getting a girl on the bed. Honestly, I’ve never heard of Jae Millz prior to this song, but he actually seems somewhat better than most of the others who had their shots on this. He’s decent. 6.5/10

I’ve just realised how much I’ve been able to write over such a simple song, and it’s not one that I like very much! Hmm… well, when I do get round to writing the review for B.o.B’s Airplanes (ft. Hayley Williams), we’ll see.

That said, the video is pretty awesome for this one. “Young Money World” is hilarious, to say the least.

OVERALL RATING = 4.5 / 10
BedRock fires along for 4:55 or so, and is loaded with mixed moments – for me, at least, the quality seems to improve somewhat towards the end of the song. It’s really a mixed bag, with decent and terrible elements. Nevertheless, the background melody is pretty catchy and thus I’d give it a pretty average-ish score.

Ke$ha–We R Who We R

Released October 22, 2010.
Billboard: Peaked at #1.
UK Charts: Is this released yet? I don’t know.

As an artist, Ke$ha has released a variety of singles that have elicited reactions all over the spectrum for me – Tik Tok (good), Your Love is My Drug (zzz, decent), Blah Blah Blah (bleurgh) and Take It Off (decent). Not counting her featured singles – Right Round with Flo Rida, Dirty Picture with Taio Cruz and My First Kiss with 3OH3,  this is her fifth one, and after listening to it, in terms of sound I can’t help but say that it’s more of the same. Not that this is bad, though – I did find Tik Tok very catchy, and though the premises of the song are questionable Take It Off was pretty enjoyable nevertheless.

The song’s a moderately… okay it seems pretty slow (120 BPM), actually, dance track. (I like my dance tracks on the upper side of 120, more like 130+ BPM usually.) Admittedly, I’m quite surprised with how this one somehow debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts. Then again, I guess my perspective can be pretty different from the American general populace… It’s a pretty pleasant listen, and I don’t think it’s bad other than for the two defects I’ll talk about below; though I don’t see what’s so great about it.

The song is supposedly inspired by the murders of several gay youth in America, and the theme of accepting one’s own individuality and not being put down by, well, haters. It’s a good theme to work with, though the choice of portraying such a theme via party animals doesn’t seem to go down so well…

As I said, I find 2 major defects with this song that severely hamper its listenability (for me, at least), and as you can probably guess it lies in the lyrical content. While I’m normally not too partial to bad lyrics, if they stand out as horrendous, then I think it’s perfectly valid to weight it against the song, and weight it heavily, if need be.

Firstly, and more clearly, we have the

DJ turn it up-up-up-up………
DJ turn it up-up-up-up………

Okay… this is getting a little annoying…

(lower pitch) DJ turn it up-up-up-up…….
(original pitch) DJ turn it up-up (rising pitch) – up – up……..

=(

But that’s not so critical, it’s just a particular lyric in the first verse that well, destroys the song for me…

And yes of course because we’re running this town just like a club
And no, you don’t wanna mess with us
Got Jesus on my necklace

Um… No. That doesn’t work, to say the least, and reminds me of the third of the Ten Commandments. I’m not comfortable listening to it, at all, honestly. And isn’t that what matters on a music review blog? Discomfort need not be a bad thing, but I think if it’s disconnected with the rest of the song, it IS bad, personally.

OVERALL RATING = 2.5 / 10
We R Who We R is a moderately catchy song; however, a weak and grating bridge section, combined with a line that may cause negative reaction to people having some similar traits as myself, severely hampers the song’s effect.

Justin Bieber–Love Me

Released: 26 October 2009
Billboard: #37
UK Charts: #71

The 16-year old Canadian teen-pop sensation, also the target of many haters online, has released a variety of singles; some of which I find bad (like One Time), but not all of them are that bad – honestly, though I wouldn’t really choose to listen to them, Baby featuring Ludacris and Somebody To Love featuring Usher are really not that bad – not really good, but not unlistenable to me either.

This one falls somewhat in between though. Bieber’s singing is… okay, really. Yes, his singing is somewhat higher than what I would expect of any 16-year old; then again, cause I know he’s the one behind this song, that is somewhat excusable. Of course, with auto-tuning I don’t see significant pitch problems at all… In terms of sound, it’s pretty much average and forgettable, but inoffensive.

That said, the lyrics in this song are pretty twisted, so bad until even just casually listening to it causes me to pick up the sheer incredulity behind it all. The song is supposed to be sweet, probably reflecting the songwriters’ ideas of the emotions one experiences with ‘puppy’ or first loves. However, if we look at what exactly he is singing…

My friends say I’m a fool to think that you’re the one for me
I guess I’m just a sucker for love
‘Cuz honestly the truth is that you know I’m never leavin’
‘Cuz you’re my angel sent from above

Okay, nothing too bad so far. I tend to dislike the metaphor of angels that some songwriters use – however, the idea of being a protector, a guardian of some sort is acceptable. It only runs downhill from here, though…

Baby you can do no wrong, my money is yours
Give you a little more because I love ya, love ya
With me, girl, is where you belong
Just stay right here, I promise my dear I’ll put nothin above ya, above ya

Sigh. He sets her up on a pedestal it seems, elevating her to the level of an idol by claiming she is infallible (can do no wrong), and even seems to want to use cash to get at her. Pretty surprising for a then 15 year old, I think.

Love me, love me, say that you love me
Fool me, fool me, oh how you do me

!!!

Kiss me, kiss me, say that you miss me
Tell me what I wanna hear, tell me you (love me) (repeat chorus)

Meh. The chorus is a minor variation on that of the Cardigans’ LoveFool; no wonder it sounds pretty familiar, and is actually not too problematic, except given the singer! Seriously, the chorus is not appropriate for Mr. Bieber to sing… at such a tender age, at least.

I won’t really go into the second verse, but that just puts on the sugar even more (A minute without you is worth more than/A thousand days without your love) and very unfortunately reminds me of a certain Praise and Worship song… All in all, the song is catchy, and musically isn’t bad, but is a complete failure in the lyrics, I find. The depiction of love given is overblown and extreme to the point of being somewhat unbelievable and incredulous.

OVERALL RATING = 3.5 / 10
Love Me isn’t really a bad song in purely musical terms; however, its lyrics bear numerous defects that can sometimes make the song difficult to listen to.