Never forget.

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Jonathan Bradley: A common thread connecting many of hip-hop’s greatest rappers has been an unspoken awareness that by living large and talking brashly they’ve defied circumstance — that the wealth they’ve amassed, the natural superiority they claim, the power and respectability they insist is their birthright has in fact been wrested by force from a society that would prefer they not have it. Implicit in their surety is an awareness of its transience; Biggie went from negative to positive to the casket in three years. You only live once, I guess. (Sigh.) Drake, even at his best, has never given the sense that he’s getting away with something; he says the right things — talking about his “team” and putting voicemail messages from his Grandma on his record — but his roots are Degrassi and a tony neighborhood of Toronto. Which isn’t a mortal sin, and lord knows it’s an extraordinary feat for a non-American to become the biggest rapper of the moment in the US, but a good rapper tells us things we don’t already know; it is not a surprise that Drake has money and fame and women interested in sleeping with him. But by the same token, Drake is also at his best when delivering verses characterized by blank condescension, the infinitely re-arrangable boss talk that, say, Pharrell turned to back when he insisted damn near every Neptunes beat should come with an obligatory Skateboard P verse. “The Motto” is mechanical Drake non-pareil, pretending he belongs alongside greats like Luke and Mac Dre, and demonstrating his limits by turning in an imitation of Pimp C that has the phrasing right but the impudence insincere: “Still gettin’ brain from a thang ain’t shit changed.” Compare to the still subpar yet more naturally gifted Weezy, who uses fewer words but better nestles his verbal flotsam into the spaces of the broad, flat bassline that dominates the beat. “Tongue kiss her other tongue,” is just whatever semantically, but the rhythmic hook Wayne creates by syncopating the phrase with the kicks is far more important than any hashtag to explaining why “The Motto” is so compulsively enjoyable.
[8]

Will Adams: They all sound too bored to live even once, so that means “The Motto” will fit nicely in between “Pumped Up Kicks” and “Every Breath You Take” in the canon of Hugely Misinterpreted Songs.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Coasting through “introspective” narratives with that patented semi-sneer, Drake is often callow if not hollow. With a bunch of rhymes as stripped of significance as the backbeat, getting help from a star and wannabe, he sounds like a challenger again.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: In an exercise meant to teach Japanese junior-high-school students what kids their age in America liked, I taught a class of 15-year-old kids text talk like “LOL” and “BRB.” The last acronym I included was “YOLO,” because at the time everybody was buzzing about the hashtag-ready philosophy. After the class finished, a lot of my students were confused – they got the general idea behind “YOLO,” but didn’t know of a situation where it could be applied.  I had missed “The Motto,” so I thought listening it might offer up some great examples for them. Nope, turns out “YOLO” is just an excuse for Drake to talk about how rich he is, to co-opt another rap scene (Drake goes hyphy?) and to make a gay joke that isn’t even clever. Lil Wayne and Tyga indulge in plenty of hashtag rap which is appropriate here, although both of them aren’t exactly using “YOLO” as a reason to do anything they haven’t rapped about before. All of this over a beat that plays it safe instead of doing something wild. I dropped the “YOLO” thing and just hoped my students would pick up good life lessons from Monsters, Inc.
[4]

Al Shipley: After years of Drake not sounding like he was having any fun, we finally got to hear what that’s like, and it was even worse than the moping. #YOGTFO
[3]

Ian Mathers: Wikipedia claims that (fucking) Drake claims this is a response song to a 2009 Nickelback single. That’s the single most interesting about “The Motto,” unless you’re interested in seeing if Lil’ Wayne has found his electricity again (he hasn’t, at least not here), and since IOLO too I’m going to stop thinking about this song now.
[3]

Brad Shoup: I’ve heard this so often it’s practically a lullabye. “Function” came and went on the radio, yet “The Motto” endured, a T-Minus hyphy production featuring two dudes feeling themselves harder than anyone in the business. It’s not… fun, but it’s effective. One of the year’s best basslines, good for playfulness or portent depending on how it’s stacked. The radio edit took out “skeet skeet skeet,” so the huge pause before “water gun” gives one the impression that Wayne’s taking his time with the deposition. Drake nails his uptempo flow while maintaining maximum clarity. Wherever you look, there’s a potential chorus. I didn’t roll my eyes at either man’s puns, the 808 flutters, and the world got “YOLO”: I may actually be underrating this.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Fucking Drake gets to be just Drake again, for a few seconds at least, and all it took was tempo. I’m gonna need some therapy before I’m up to talking YOLO.
[7]

Andy Hutchins: There are many, many things to hate about Drake front and center on “The Motto” — “Spanish girls”; “clubbin’ hard, fuckin’ women, there ain’t much to do”; “still gettin’ brain from a thang”; “you niggas more YMCA”; “she know even if I’m fuckin’ wit’ her, I don’t really need her”; “I can almost guarantee she know the deal”; the modernizing of carpe diem as a code for near-ironic hedonism — and there are bad things about post-Rikers Lil Wayne on it (“Skeet skeet skeet, water gun”). But there are maybe one or two better jams (“I Don’t Like,” “Rack City”) from the last 12 months, and T-Minus vulcanizing the bass and reducing the bells and claps of hyphy to menacing accessories made this the instrumental of 2012. And fitting flows snugly to what is essentially underwater hyphy made “The Motto” one of the most singable rap songs in ages, even if it means swapping expertly aimed birdshot for the rhythm of suppressing fire; this is just about as good as this specific type of rap can get, and it could probably get a graveyard to bounce. (There’s no point in reviewing the version with Tyga; in the hundreds of times I have heard “The Motto” on the radio, I heard his verse, which is forgettable and has nothing more notable than a cringe-y drag/RuPaul bar, maybe twice.) (Also: What’s worse: a white daughter of a punk rocker from East Oakland rapping like a Bay Area rapper, or a half-Memphis, half-Canadian rapper appropriating hyphy, Mac Dre, Keak, and The Bay? Rap heads’ opinions may surprise you! At least Earl Stevens’ cameo in the video is a better nod to originators than the rap karaoke that is most of Kreayshawn’s album?)
[9]

Alex Ostroff: That beat. That beat. So deceptively simple at first but just keeps going, a little bit bounce, a little bit hyphy, a little bit jerk. Compulsively addictive, endlessly freestyle-able. (Try Kalenna’s.) The only job Drake and Wayne (and Tyga) have here is to bend themselves as close to that rhythm as they possibly can, and keep things moving. They do.
[7]

Zach Lyon: Probably nothing to say about “YOLO” that a million angry white kids on Reddit haven’t already whined about (still not sure why). Without the revolution and subsequent backlash I never would’ve figured out what fucking Drake was even saying there, because, uh, #mumblecorehashtagrap. I also never realized that Tyga was even on this track, and I probably listened to it a thousand times in the car. I could never change the station! That’s what you get with a good instrumental that knows when to back down and resurface, and some decent vocal hooks. Ladies, gentlemen, etc: the most average song of 2012.
[5]

Andrew Casillas: BURN IT WITH FIRE!
[3]