Blather and burgundy atmospherics.
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[6.22]
Anthony Easton: Cunnilingus has been disparaged or ignored in much hip-hop, but lately it seems that the subject is encouraged. A whole genre of songs about it have emerged, but this own, with its low ambitions and high stakes, has a rewarding somnolent pleasure.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Same old story: tough female performer forced to endure the monkeyshines of a male companion. “Live fast die young,” she says, a terrible fate to wish on a track with Schoolboy’s rap.
[6]
David Sheffieck: Tinashe is so smooth here it seems like it should be impossible for the song to go as hard as it does. She pulls it off though, with help from Q’s great verse and the hashtag-ready title phrase. Tinashe would be easily forgiven for pulling a Mariah and titling the song #2on, but she made the right call – it’s not even necessary here. I expect we’ll be seeing this spread across Twitter some weekend very soon.
[8]
Mallory O’Donnell: More sex-n-substances blather and burgundy atmospherics from relatively new additions to the US “live fast and die dumb(sorry, I meant young)” camp. The track is well-crafted, resonant and creatively ornamented when it’s not being derailed by tired stutter drums and an absurd “hey” sample that sounds more Jingle Dogs than urban jungle. Tinashe herself is breathily pleasant up until the point of Schoolboy’s verse, after which she gets all Rihanna-of-a-sudden, but to be fair he lowers the IQ of everyone in the room simply by showing up.
[4]
Megan Harrington: Mayonnaise on the beat, ho. Tinashe’s main struggle will obviously be the resounding chorus of “Oh, so this isn’t Jhene Aiko?” Jumping on a DJ Mustard production introduces her to the hype cycle where, at best, she’s another in a string of paper dolls. There are better sides to Tinashe — the warm twilight of “Ecstasy” or the desperate assault of “Vulnerable” — but this is a blatant attempt to homogenize her. To what end? A duet with Drake? Some legacy. Schoolboy Q gets to pin the ratchet badge to his merit sash; in time for his album to drop we meet Q’s fuck side, a new dimension for a rapper mostly concerned with stacking, cooking, and his daughter. On Tinashe’s own song she’s reduced to a warm bodied on ramp for an already acclaimed guest star.
[4]
Brad Shoup: With “getting money like an invoice”, I have to assume Tinashe’s going for that freelance-writer love. It’s… an inadvisable tack. Similarly unwise is underlining a pun on the name of a former group that no one cares about. Nothing’s more exciting than Mustard sneaking in a distant string section — Q’s green world actually places third.
[5]
Crystal Leww: The tag “mussardonthebeat ho” usually prophesizes a fairly repetitive and basic but totally banging beat, so it’s pleasantly surprising how dynamic this beat is! Meanwhile, Tinashe proves that the girls can make a DJ Mustard West-Coast ratchet club banger just as effectively as the boys without giving up herself, particularly through the slight feminization through the use of the words like “clique” instead of “crew” (sure, Kanye did it, too, but it was always perceived as more of a gossipy girl word). Plus, it’s a song about drugs and clubbing with the understated R&B vocal styling but Tinashe sounds like she’s having a hell of a time rather than acting like a total sad sack. What a banger.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Another singer might have made this cloyingly fetching or even dark — faded in the wrong way, feeling like strings but surrounded by cold sampled men and their drugs and wants — but Tinashe strikes a tough balance between sweet and confident. DJ Mustard might claim the sound, decade-old nostalgia might claim the appeal, but hers is the real gift.
[7]
Jer Fairall: Tinashe’s impressive pair of 2012 mix tapes showed how Abel Tesfaye’s brand of bleary-eyed R&B could express modes of pleasure that were free of both guilt and debauchery, something that Schoolboy’s boorish presence here comes perilously close to nullifying. As a vocalist, though, she remains the music’s ideal aural companion, airy and reticent, but artfully seductive.
[6]