If you guessed “4 weeks” as the time between our last entry featuring Nicki Minaj and this one, you win a prize.
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[3.87]
Katherine St Asaph: One of the worst things about 2010s pop is the compulsion on the part of everyone, significant or not, to engage in a stupid arms race of who can leak the most and first insignificant portions of their song in an attempt to turn a crappy video into a figurative or literal flash mob extravaganza. Of course nobody complains but critics, but still — this fucking song had five teasers. An “audio teaser,” a “partial lyrics video,” an actual lyrics video, a video teaser, and a second video teaser. Then you realize the full thing’s been out for weeks, and it’s the David Guetta Template, Major Key Version, and you could have extrapolated this entire song from “Club Can’t Handle Me” and any given Nicki verse. I eagerly await Guetta’s next remasterpiece, released one beat at a time.
[3]
Michelle Myers: Someday we’re going to look back on 2011 as the year French house populist David Guetta became the top club rap producer in the game.
[7]
Al Shipley: I had a soft spot for “Club Can’t Handle Me,” but I can say with no small amount of relief that my affection for Guetta/Rida joint ventures ends there. And the addition of sub-Left Eye chattering to the mix doesn’t help things. Do you think Flo thought about the possible unintended connotations of the couplet “So many girls in here, where do I begin/ I see this one, I’m ’bout to go in”?
[1]
Hazel Robinson: Having listened to “Club Can’t Handle Me” at least once a day for several months, I maybe didn’t approach this with the trepidation regarding both Guetta and Flo Rida that others might have. While I know exactly what both of them are going to do, it turns out that this is exactly what I want them to and Nicki feels more at home than she should here — I really don’t mind her doing pop and there’s enough silly voice playacting here that there’s no danger of her getting lost in the mix.
[8]
Andy Hutchins: “Where Them Girls At” sounds like someone (okay, Dr. Luke) took the “S&M” synths and re-warmed them: strike one. Flo Rida’s typically Flubbery flow isn’t even in full effect; he sounds breathless, and for no particular reason. That’s strike two. Nicki’s adherence to the really stupid pre-hook is a sign that this might be a quick backwards K, but then Nicki does what Nicki does while rapping: “It’s Peeby, Peeby / Who’s Peabo Bryson!? / Two years ago, I renewed my license / Anyway, why’d I start my verse like that?” is the beginning of yet another brilliant, off-kilter trip into the cotton candy-colored nonsense world Nicki inhabits on other people’s party records. At this point, Nicki’s one of maybe five to ten rappers whose verses on Random Rapper X’s pop play I’ll spin on the strength of name alone, and I’ll be damned if Nicki’s success rate on those verses isn’t upwards of 75%. There’s no reason to listen to “Where Them Girls At” until Nicki appears (1:01) or after she disappears (2:43); maybe it’s because faceless, nameless “Girls” aren’t an eighth as compelling as Minaj?
[5]
Matthew Harris: Even with Minaj blazing nonsense, the song’s pedestrian melody and clopping beat struggle to shake off a stench of Smirnoff Ice and Drakkar Noir. This is the H&M t-shirt of dance music: dumbed-down, poorly fitted, over-sequined, and likely to fall apart in three months.
[3]
Sally O’Rourke: If anyone can take on David Guetta’s bludgeoning bosh and come out with claws shining, it’s Nicki Minaj. Her verse on “Where Them Girls At” isn’t the most virtuosic in her repertoire, but the fake false start and connect-the-dots digressions are seasonally appropriate; summer is much too hot for “Monster”-like verbal calisthenics. Yes, Flo Rida is also present, but even his perpetual hamfistedness can’t harsh the sugar buzz of “day day day da-day da-day day.”
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: I have a high tolerance for cheesy dance pop, in the sense that, erm, I’m quite happy to tolerate its existence. The biggest sin this commits, however, is in making Nicki Minaj sound barely more interesting than Flo Rida.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: I know someone somewhere must still be enjoying David Guetta records. Judging by this video, at least he still is. Minaj giving her all aside, if you liked “Who’s That Chick,” this is the same.
[3]
Jer Fairall: Nicki’s feature is unhinged in the very manner that far too many of her pop singles discourage, and for about half a minute this threatens to actually turn into something enjoyable. Guetta’s shiny surfaces remain so obnoxiously facile that they immediately sterilize any hint of quirk, though, and by now this song is popular enough that I’m already filled with that same sense of creeping dread that accompanies the opening strains of any David Guetta song whenever I start to hear that whoosh of stabbing synths that kicks this one off.
[2]
Alex Ostroff: David Guetta and Flo Rida have rarely been anything but predictably competent, so the true quality of ‘Where Them Girls At?’ rises or falls with the unpredictable Nicki. When she is good she is very very good, but when she is bad, she is horrid, etc. Her verse is an unconnected string of gibberish, but the frantic pace beat forces Nicki to tap into the more manic side of her personality, stuttering, and chanting schoolyard jump rope jingles. She even breaks out her Trini accent (but only for a couplet; I’m dying for another “Beam Me Up Scotty”). Still, I would listen to Nicki toast over beats like this for far longer than a guest verse.
[6]
Michaela Drapes: It’s dumb lug Flo Rida vs. the silvertongued Nicki, enabled by David Guetta’s bang bang bang baby beat, and sadly, there are no winners here.
[3]
Josh Langhoff: A Very Special Song about a baller, played by Flo Rida, who tries to strike up an at-least-threesome with a lady who suffers from multiple personality disorder. When it becomes clear that nobody’s showing up besides Nicki’s panoply of personae, he turns tail and flees. Later in his empty apartment he learns to regret his cowardice and wonders why he can’t stop singing “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again.”
[3]
Zach Lyon: 1. There are so many female women ladies in this club, I would like to romance all of them. 2. Okay, there is one. I am going to romance her. 3. She tells me that she has friends. 4. What!? 5. A thought is emerging! 6. I would like to meet these other female women ladies. I trust your judgment in the friends you keep. 7. Friendship is magic!
[2]
Alfred Soto: The first recorded version of this song, according to Henry Adams’ History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, was performed by a string quartet during one Dolly Madison’s soirées. “It is remarkable,” the First Lady wrote to a friend, “how well the keyboard adapts itself to every idiom.” It was next heard an hour before the British burned the White House during the War of 1812.
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