If you wanted proof the Jukebox doesn’t like EVERYTHING associated with Charli XCX…
[Video][Website]
[2.40]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: There’s little triumph in boasting about your easily Googled identity, but Candy is adamant her music “make you wanna copy-cut-paste and click on me,” about as tossed-off an arm motion as scratching your own ear. She sounds like a hip-hop meme, from her fashionable triplet flow to her Gucci Mane namecheck. There are echoes of Kreayshawn circa 2012 — another viral video star with concessions to a hip-hop audience — but Candy doesn’t dare reach for anything resembling the hookiness of “Gucci Gucci.” “Opulence” never moves when Candy’s rapping. When Diplo gets Candy to do something other than rap, her presence is felt; the mouth-clacking on the chorus sounds like an ice cube being drawn around a mouth, followed by a healthy, pleased “ahh!” It’s an expensive cocktail tasting functioning as a percussive tool. Now, that’s opulent.
[4]
Will Adams: Funny, your beats, lyrics, and overall schtick seem pretty cheap to me.
[3]
Anthony Easton: For a song about opulence, this is oddly parsimonious — it cannot even commit to full disco sirens. For a song about status envy, it is profoundly unanxious. For a song from an artist called Candy, it is terribly sour. I am not sure if these are interesting contradictions anymore. The lift from Paris Is Burning, one of the better movies about the problems of class, makes it even worse.
[4]
Mallory O’Donnell: Sweater from last season, beat from two years ago, mindset circa 2000 BC.
[2]
David Lee: You’re all like “Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on my timepiece, jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.” And I’m like “I don’t care.” Alternatively, I’m like “I would care if you didn’t do things like rhyme ‘afford’ with Forbes or discuss your ‘hood persona‘ in interviews.”
[4]
Crystal Leww: Attention, white female rappers: people don’t dislike y’all because you’re white or because you’re a woman. It’s because you do and say some fucked-up shit on top of having bland music. There is actually blackface in this video, and the beat sounds like something M.I.A. would have rejected in 2005.
[0]
Alfred Soto: Iggy Azalea proved a squeaky artist with a talent for hiring collaborators incommensurate with her talents has a shot at the top ten. But this release is so far from interesting, let alone living up to its title, that I’m sure it’s a Dada gesture.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: I didn’t realize “music for Spring Breakers II to half-recontextualize in some sad scene” was now a genre.
[2]
Brad Shoup: I would jam to a song built around a “I own ev-ry-thing, ba-by” hook. Croaked alongside Candy’s pitched-down, goony register, it’s the only boast that doesn’t completely mistranslate the vibe she’s glommed onto. All apologies to Grimes, who’s the Brad Paisley to Brooke’s Little Jimmy Dickens, but we’re in Angie Jordan territory.
[1]
Megan Harrington: Drown it in Riff Raff’s blood.
[2]