Oh, it’s instructional…
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[3.00]
Patrick St. Michel: “Talk Dirty” is the reason I sometimes feel guilty being an American ex-pat.
[0]
David Turner: When songs treat other cultures and countries as sexual buffets for internationally famous super stars, I just don’t know what to say at this point. It’s just as boring and uninteresting as it is offensive. But 2 Chainz?! Why Mr. Chainz are you doing this to yourself?! The 2 Chainz brand deserves better. Does Mr. Commes Des Garcon appreciate this? What about Mr. Alexander Wang? Answer me that Tauheed, and do your shades really cost 8 bands?
[2]
Jonathan Bogart: Oh, man. On the one hand this is the best song Jason Derulo’s ever recorded, sexy and goofy and full of interesting, funky sounds. On the other hand, the way it exoticizes its nominal object — girls around the world — is cringeworthy and awful and borderline racist. The production and Derulo’s relaxed delivery (shades of Robin Thicke, and I doubt it’s an accident) are an [8], the lyrics and fake-Arabic riffs are a [1]; split the difference and add [1] for 2 Chainz, and you get:
[5]
Alfred Soto: Let’s talk about the Balkan Beat Box horn sample. Yes, they provide the sleaze that the chorus can’t evoke on its own, but the leering insistence of Derulo’s vocal and 2 Chainz’s flat-out stupid rhymes about pussy and photos is like a “Three Caballeros” remake done by Jerry Bruckheimer, who presumably would explain the semiotics of international oral sex.
[4]
Iain Mew: That sax skronk don’t need explaining, but Derulo is hopeless at conveying enjoyment and the song’s premise is both offensive and offensively muddled. The international language of booty is one thing, but if you get off on dirty talk, why wouldn’t it be better from someone with a command of your language?
[2]
Brad Shoup: Total clown work. Except for that chorus. Someone take another stab at that chorus.
[2]
Will Adams: This has so much going for it. Jason shows more personality in one minute than he does in his entire discography elsewhere, the horn motive grabs a hold like an anchor, and 2 Chainz adds a bold crassness that balances Jason’s lecherous verses. But under the veneer of finding universal booty and international love lies an unsettling power disparity, succinctly presented in the final seconds, when an anonymous woman with a moderate accent giggles, “What? I don’t understand!” But Jason does, and it makes a world of difference.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: Almost without fail, umlaut renouncer Jason Derulo’s singles are both generic and faintly ludicrous — usually by dint of a sample — and so as with his last one (not that ludicrous), this marks a break from the norm — one thing it is not is generic. The sample is in place though, and it is outlandish. That’s the good part. The bad part is pretty much everything else. Everything else, aptly enough, would be best experienced through a heavy linguistic barrier. A wise man once claimed that everybody hates a tourist; someone should have told Jason.
[4]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Where Oakland producer Wallpaper attempts to retcon Jason Derulo into a sex symbol, which would be a fine idea if it wasn’t for the fact that we know so little about Derulo beyond his own name — he’s a blank slate, so the shock shouldn’t register. However, it does. With a beat that could be described as “Mr Saxobeat” on half a Molly, the anonymous Mr Anyone recasts himself as Gigolo Polyglot, seducing non-American women over Balkan Beat Box samples. A heavily-accented woman of East Asian descent closes the song, giggling that she doesn’t understand, despite Derulo voraciously attesting that his body is some type of sexual Rosetta Stone. It’s a bad idea for a song — it was plenty stupid when Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards and Young Money did it — but Derulo has little to lose and to his credit, is entirely devoted to making sure you remember “Talk Dirty.” As it stands, it is a highly professional big-budget catastrophe, like an elaborate firework display consisting of three half-sodden sparklers. Also, 2 Chainz says “suck my penis.”
[3]