Shameless laziness-inducing summer jams? We’ll take them.
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[7.71]
Anthony Easton: Beautiful chorus, just soars like it’s a jet through the gulf stream, and love the sung bedrock, where a decent flow is grown. A little too much going on, and the song is a bit too long, but throughly enjoyable.
[7]
Alfred Soto: I love the chorus: a cacophony played and experienced at quarter speed. Dre, the most repugnant hip hop figure of the last thirty years, still has nothing to say and is grotesque about saying it but he knows from grooves, and this sports one, from the is-it-sampled guitar and thick snare slap to the pizzicato. Enough of a groove to ride it out for almost a minute.
[7]
Brad Shoup: By happenstance, this song got slotted on a mix CD as part of a three-pack of hip-hop songs with a grouchy relational view. “It’s a beautiful day, I guess/For a bitch to roll with Andre, I guess” — I just want to give Dre a hug, and maybe some counseling. He’s in vintage anhedonic form, with Kendrick right behind him, turning the three Ws into a win column. But hey, Lamar’s hitting his switches, putting an existential whine to the word “hometown” here, turning his chart ambitions into a revenge fantasy there, pulling off one of the slyest blind-musician jokes elsewhere. The icing is Scoop Deville’s light-stepping entry in the lazy LA day canon. In Scoop’s hands, the Twin Sister sample becomes an MPB banger. One point off for being the sourest tourism campaign ever.
[9]
Erick Bieritz: Oh sure, the weather’s nice, but what about the dysfunctional state government? Scoop DeVille’s track is unusually bottom-heavy and cool to the touch considering the California Board of Tourism subject matter, and even he said he didn’t think Dr. Dre would be interested because it wouldn’t sound West Coast. But it does work. No clue why Dre is rapping, in 2012, on a track he didn’t even cut, but he sounds hungry and certainly isn’t a detriment in front of the microphone like certain other parties.
[8]
Iain Mew: I love Twin Sister, but more for the madcap stuff like “Gene Ciampi” than the spaced out songs like the one from that underpins “The Recipe”. Kendrick on the second verse is the only one to supply the urgency to rise above its pleasant languor.
[6]
John Seroff: Dre has long established himself as the cicada of pop producers; once every seven years or so he rouses himself to make an inescapable and joyous noise, then he’s Swayze. “The Recipe” is that thousand-thousand wing anthem, the sound of a hit. The sample is brilliantly manipulated, the slap-and-kick beat appropriately blunted, and the plucked strings add a deft feminine touch. Lamar, sensing his moment, steps up with the grounded self of a man who knows an American summer will be shifting lanes with his words echoing down the freeway.
[9]
Katherine St Asaph: Stretches its groove like taffy in warm water, so these few minutes could go on forever.
[8]