A miniature introduction (for us, anyway)…
[Video]
[5.33]
Patrick St. Michel: Less of a showstopper and more of a really good tag-team demonstration. Dynasty shows what she’s got while Talib Kweli reminds the world of his skills. It’s a bite-size song, but leaves me wanting more from both artists.
[7]
Anthony Easton: It’s interesting for its absences, for its inability to complete whole sentences, for the rupture, and for the gap… well, not that interesting, and it’s been done before, but it’s still passable.
[4]
Alfred Soto: By all means let’s have brevity but she’s barely introduced herself before Talib brings the testimonial, as if realizing how shaky the project was from the start.
[5]
Crystal Leww: This song is comprised entirely of two forgettable verses from two very capable emcees over a beat that never changes. Yawn.
[4]
Brad Shoup: Producer Jinx’s treatment “I Put a Spell on You” pushes the production towards the direction of Rihanna’s “Cockiness”: scatting as spine. It’s sound-as-sound, but brighter than NYC’s grimy mid-’90s examples. Sad to say, the Peltier shout would seem to date this. Honestly, so does Dynasty’s pledge to “avoid the obscene”… take that out and the admission that “I don’t write all of the time” (me neither, queen, me neither), there’s not much left.
[5]
Jer Fairall: The no-frills black and white video shows Dynasty spitting lyrics into a studio mic while reading them out of a journal where they have been handwritten in a furious scrawl. Some of these lyrics include “‘Cause I love it and I feel like it’s the only thing I’ve got / It’s the one thing I get right all the time / I don’t write all of the time, but when I’m rapping I shine” and “If you wanna steal my flow, you gotta steal me / And even then, I’m a still be shining / Locked in a basement, rhyming / Banging on the walls of my captors to keep the perfect timing.” The classic soul vocal, looped tightly into a hook, coupled with the force with which Dynasty and seasoned pro Talib trade verses, will invite easy comparisons to Kanye and Jay’s “Otis,” but the particular raw urgency of “Stay Shinin'” feels like true life-or-death stuff, and the rapper’s determination is at once a defiant spit in the face and a vulnerable display of just how much is at stake in this brisk little two-point-whatever minutes. If it all amounts to a simple boast track, and a possibly premature one at that, everything about “Stay Shinin'” is so fiercely dedicated to showing the sheer hard work that Dynasty puts in that the boast feels earned.
[7]