Fred again.. x Skepta x PlaqueBoyMax – Victory Lap

Skepta celebrates his highest UK chart position since 2012…

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Al Varela: I generally don’t trust these rap taste streamers cuz a lot of them are weird about women. But PlaqueBoyMax seems to be an exception. I mean he got Fred again.. to remix a Doechii song into a slamming banger with Skepta spitting his heart out on it. The bass hits like a truck, and Skepta drives said truck with reckless abandon. I don’t know whether PlaqueBoyMax contributed to the production or whether he’s just playing DJ Khaled with the rappers he gets on stream, but he’s already making music that surpasses even the best of DJ Khaled.
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Iain Mew: Spotting the sampled hook potential of Doechii’s verse is one thing, cutting and looping it so perfectly another, and then there’s pulling off the route of making it start off going incredibly hard only to shift up the intensity still further. Add to that Skepta, tagging straight on and relishing the setting. Doechii’s words would come off very different coming directly from him, but “Victory Lap” doesn’t really point them at anyone anyway, even as he echoes her phrasing in places. The link made between the two is more about a vibe, the sound of something you can only pull off when you know you’ve already won.
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Nortey Dowuona: Me to Fred again..
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Mark Sinker: Doechii’s speed-jabber as looped drum-sample and bed, chopped off hard at the word “cheaper” for a splurt of grimewords less triumph of success than the jittery unease that comes this, yr essay blanketed in post-its of ideas not even workshopped yet – but they’re good! They must be! Listen how fun they are to say: “black swan — darren aronofsky”…!!  Prowling throughout a three-note bass shape: it swerves a semitone down when the drama needs to open up and move in. 
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Will Adams: I was prepared to go into this shouting “Fuck U Fred Again You Think Ur Skrillex But Ur Not,” but the Doechii sample hooked me immediately. From there, Fred’s molasses-thick bassline provides the perfect bed for Skepta to boast, while also namedropping what I assume are his Letterboxd favs.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I of course like Fred in this mode better than in his attempts to coast off Brian Eno’s prestige (Beatie Wolfe did it better, anyways), but this just feels so unnecessary; I’d rather listen to “Jungle” or the original “Swamp Bitches” than hear late-period Skepta blunder through some baffling lyrical choices (the “Darren Aronofsky” line did make me laugh!) Yet I still am endeared by this; the bass, at least, sounds quite expensive, and sometimes that’s enough.
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Julian Axelrod: It’s bad enough we don’t get the Skepta x Doechii collab we deserve. But you’re gonna lift half her verse wholesale and not even give her a courtesy credit? And to make matters worse, you’re gonna give top billing to a streamer turned rapper who’s one of six credited producers on the track? In a vacuum, the song works perfectly fine: I can’t be too mad at Skepta saying Darren Aronofsky over nasty synth blurts. But imagine if we got Skepta and Doechii saying Darren Aronofsky over nasty synth blurts! Talk about mother!
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Katherine St. Asaph: A banger that doubles as a teaser for two other, not-yet-existent bangers: an actual Skepta-Doechii collaboration, given how electric their combined energies are even when the latter is an uncredited snippet; and a dungeon-crawl OST by Fred again.., in which the final boss track is this.
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Ian Mathers: Sometimes the ol’ hindbrain can’t form a more coherent response than “oh man, this goes” and you know what? That’s okay too.
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