Weapon of mass fierceness.
[Video][Website]
[6.90]
Anthony Easton: This is more Jayne Mansfield (brash, artifical, full of self aware persona building) than it is Monroe (shy, obsessed with hiding her artifice, less self aware). Also, it suggests a general misunderstanding of what is filmed and what is persona.
[1]
Alfred Soto: This is the difference between striking and memorable. The sirens, two-note riff, programmed handclaps, and other aural effluvia pricked my ear; Perry’s voice didn’t. She’s not mush-mouthed so much as hand to mouth, living from one okay line to another. Besides, to bury the Norma Jean metaphor and Jimmy Kimmel allusion requires more shrewdness than shown here.
[4]
Brad Shoup: The insouciance of her delivery is phenomenal, but to put over this much poor posturing, it has to be. Leaving out the outdated image-glomming of the title, we still have the following major missteps: 1) using Kimmel as an example of the limelight, 2) the backed-up toilet joke, and 3) putting Peyton Manning’s name in proximity to “looking great in panties”. Divas should stay on-message, right? Meanwhile, Cainon Lamb builds a wheedly, mincing track that shares thematically little with the actual Marilyn. Next time, perhaps something a bit more bubbly? Or is that not how Perry gears her voice?
[4]
Iain Mew: I love the way this sounds — fizzy and buzzing with excitement, and Brianna matches that in her delivery some of the time. I just wish that there were more lines as witty as the friend requests/dress blowin’ up ones, or at least that more was done to vary the flow like with the white girl cash flow line and the ones either side of it. At the moment too much of the rest feels slightly routine.
[6]
Michelle Myers: Brianna’s strength lies in her incredible voice which combines the gracious alto timbre of a debutant with the type of Southern drawl that turns Miss Keri’s last name into “heel-sin.” Rap music has cast boasting in a lot different lights: bratty, subversive, threatening, gleeful. Brianna reminds us that arrogance can be ladylike too.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: Southern booty music edged with upscale Northern signifiers, Brianna straddling all lines with the sly authority of someone with more mic-rocking talent than she shows here. Talent’s overrated, though; or rather, there are more kinds than merely being A Good Rapper. There’s also the talent of selling yourself with the kind of fuckoff confidence it takes to appropriate the most iconographic white Hollywood legend. The video takes cues from photoshoots by Bert Sterns and Richard Avedon without doing any crass homages, which is perfect, because Brianna’s sense of style is far more vivid and necessary than Marilyn’s ever was. At first I thought I heard sissy bounce, and was on the lookout for drag; but fierceness can come from anywhere, and is perhaps a harder talent to cultivate than any other.
[9]
Pete Baran: I remember when Panasonic developed their “sonic weapon” which they said played in subsonic frequencies that would make you shit yourself. I am certain it’s playing underneath all the other sirens, samples and glitches in this awesome track. I makes me want to go out and buy a pair of gold stilettos, and so some sort of high stepping dance that would get me arrested in any Catholic nation in the world.
[10]
Zach Lyon: God, if she starts to get real attention, I shudder to imagine the thinkpieces. I want to just say “Let’s appreciate a singular new talent” but I can’t help but compare this to “212”: both introducing massively distinctive rappers with killer lines I’d want to write on my Five Star binder in white-out, both with great beats and similar videos, and both seeming to work in far-off, uncharted territories of vocal delivery. Both have me worried if one great song is all we’ll really get from them. But anyway, the “arrogant/Marilyn” rhyme is just magical.
[9]
Alex Ostroff: Intellectually, I love intricate rhyme schemes, but on a visceral level there is nothing more enjoyable than a rapper who really savours the sonics of language. Brianna twists vowels and stretches syllables until lines that appear bland on the page become eminently quotable, and straight-up repeating lines sounds exciting and novel. Hell, it took me nearly two weeks to figure out that the chorus boasts of “checkerboard lipstick”. Her pronunciation of “lyin'” alone is a masterclass in this sort of thing. If that weren’t enough, “Marilyn Monroe” has ascended into the ranks of my-brain-can’t-help-but-finish-that-line phrases like ‘Independent Woman Part II”s “Question?”. My boyfriend and I recently saw My Week With Marilyn (not terrible, not great) and on more than one occasion, my brain automatically began chanting, “the money fast but she shook the ass slow / She white girl with a get-the-cash flow.” Class dismissed.
[10]
John Seroff: Powerhouse mushmouth vamping that satisfies as it eats a hole through your skull.
[8]