It’s not a song title, it’s an Ebert pullquote!
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[5.50]
Anthony Easton: The texture here is really crunchy, and it sort of rises and falls with the spiky quality of B.o.B’s flow. That is masterful. And the working out of the tension between singing and rapping–that seems to be a little new in hip hop and it’s a quality I like.
[6]
Brad Shoup: So I dig the upbeat B.o.B, clearly. “So Good” is prime pop-rap in the sense that his flow is crisp for mass comprehension, and his world-is-ours tablesetting is free from internal conflict. But while its grandiosity is leagues away from Kwamé — I could swear Tedder’s copped the piano crochets from “Two Weeks” — he’s chosen his references cannily. Instead of Rothko and Margiela, we get Michelangelo and Gershwin (!); he drops geographic references (including a Kanye cribbing) like Verbal Kint in a 1950s travel agency. In other words, the journeys he describes are 99-percenter aspirational, rather than an Illuminati itinerary. And that chorus! It was hooky enough as it was, all top hats and bowing, and then they appended that beautiful la-la-la section. Perhaps it’s to keep the Brunos at bay. More generally, though, Bobby’s proven he can carry a single straight through.
[9]
Andrew Ryce: The beat sounds like a carbon copy of “Airplanes” inflated to slightly more dramatic proportions. The chorus sounds like a raspier Bruno Mars, but not as sexy as I just made that sound. What was B.o.B’s appeal was supposed to be in the first place? His personality? His sing-songy rap style? His voice sounds oddly abrasive against the overdriven, maxed-out beat, and it’s nowhere near as catchy as it should be: what used to make him charismatic is unusually grating (the way he says “We can go to Italy and maybe see the Coliseum” should provoke nothing but infuriation in a normal person), and there’s no glitzy guest appearance to distract from the disappointment. It’s all B.o.B here and it’s not so good.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The only way I’d know this was a Ryan Tedder production was looking it up — a healthy sign. With Gershwin references here and Beethoven there and piano triplets everywhere, this is the best mainstream rap hit since “Black and Yellow.” Whether B.o.B is worth paying attention to is another question, but that’s part of this song’s triumph: he’s giddy at what he’s getting away with.
[7]
Iain Mew: The excellent plinky hook and extravagant energy are making me want to like this a lot. There are just a couple of things holding it back. First, the globe-trotting pop song listing locations has been done to death already recently. It takes a lot of charm to make up for that. “So Good” has that though! Which leaves the combined rhyme and geography failure of “We’ll hit up Europe/And spend some Euros/Or maybe visit Berlin/The walls with the murals”.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: B.o.B gets his very own empire (“State of Mind”).
[5]
John Seroff: It’s not that B.o.B is a bad rapper exactly; it’s that he seems bent on focusing his efforts on being arguably the best element of the worst conceivable material. Hardly surprising when you consider that his efforts to become the backpack Flo Rida are paying off big… or at least as big as buying in gets you these days. Spring break singalongs are right around the corner and this half-insipid hank of tissue should kindle both bright and fast, leaving barely a bit of ash by summer.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Hey B.o.B, you seem like a nice enough guy, but inoffensive mush like this ain’t gonna get the Tyler, The Creators of the world off your back. Not that listening to Tyler is ever a good idea in the first place, but letting Ryan Tedder anywhere near your music is an even worse one.
[4]