Let’s play master and servant!
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[6.12]
Jonathan Bogart: I don’t know but I been told (I don’t know but I been told) — the only way to make that hoary old trope into convincing pop is if you have someone with an ego the size of the United States defense budget bludgeoning you into accepting it. Hail Kanye.
[7]
Brad Shoup: West’s going for the near-impossible: a constant stream of product that expands his mystique instead of eroding it. “New God Flow” is a bad step off the wire: an excruciating military call-and-response (was the whole camp seriously occupied?), an off-pitch Whitney/drowning juxtaposition, an only slightly less off-pitch Pryor/fire joke. Thank God for Pusha T’s musicality. He makes off with the line-trading, and bless him, he’s sticking with the Nature Boy ad-libs. I don’t even mind his jumping on the Socratic train. The bass riff is sufficiently puncturing of the etude nonsense, and I’ll take Ghostface wherever he surfaces (clearly).
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: Brandon Soderberg recently wrote that Pusha T as of late has “never seems happy or excited or thrilled or even all that angry about anything” while being “weirdly fine being Kanye’s living breathing street cred.” On “New God Flow,” Pusha T snarls through his verses, trying to sound angrier than he has as of late even when he’s just threatening to go “four door” or laying down a forced line about the Tupac hologram. Even though he sounds fiercer, he’s still spending a decent chunk of his verses hyping Kanye up. Worse yet for Pusha, West steamrolls his portion of the song. He’s still comparing himself to kindred celebrities (LeBron James) and historical figures bound to raise eyebrows, but he sounds so natural doing it he ends up the highlight. Poor Pusha – he upped his game here, but still gets overshadowed by Kanye.
[7]
Anthony Easton: I shook my head at the line about he was the reputation of Biggie Smalls, Martin, and Rodney King; I laughed out loud at the line about the molesting uncle; I was tempted to shut the whole enterprise at the stripper anecdote, when it finally reached the military cadence, we just got to admire the swaggering bad taste.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Ye and Pusha constrict post-gangsta chic into a narrative that’s camp at its least delicious. Other than the pedophile uncle, the only thing striking about the lyrics is how Rodney King, Whitney Houston, and Pac form part of the pantheon to which Ye aspires. He’ll need more than God with this flow.
[4]
Alex Ostroff: Kanye continues to ride beats that are as bombastic as his delivery is unsubtle. Pusha T spends an entire verse justifying his new role as an instrument in Kanye’s toolkit, to be deployed when Ye needs a vague sense of menace. Despite this, Kanye continues to decorate his narcissism with enough politics and anger to keep ‘New God Flow’ interesting, and the third-person bit at the three-minute mark brings to mind the most human moments of The College Dropout. GOOD Fridays tracks were always mixed bags of great ideas overstuffed with one too many guests, samples or sounds to entirely work, and the 2012 incarnation hasn’t changed this fact. There’s plenty to like here, but I’ll never need to hear the military chant outro ever again. (Alternatively, in a couple of months I’ll find it endearing instead of unendurable.)
[6]
Jamieson Cox: I feel the same way listening to “New God Flow” that I do when a high-ranking executive passes me in the hall at work, their bronzed thumbs operating a BlackBerry, rocking an impeccably fitting suit and a fine coif. These are men who are fully aware of their power and influence and carry themselves as such. Do these men sometimes err, buying gaudy sports cars or recording solo call-and-response sequences? Of course. But I can’t help and admire the confidence that allows them to make those errors in the first place. For better and for worse, “New God Flow” is confidence through and through.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: The stomp under Kanye is impressive enough and the sheer sound of it has authority and potential (think of all the great things you could do on top of that). That we get a military chant is not just a waste, it’s boring on a level that’s insulting. Annoyingly, a lot of the rest of “New God Flow” is as clever as Pusha thinks it is. Dude doesn’t want for confidence, or better friends, only better judgment.
[5]