What a web we weave.
[Video][Website]
[3.82]
Hazel Robinson: Yet another in the series of insults to Natasha Romanov issued recently. Am I more upset about this paltry effort at sexual menace than I am at the fact the dog from Britain’s Got Talent has a film before Black Widow? I think I possibly am. I wanted to like this, as I genuinely like Rita Ora and find Iggy Azalea hideously attractive but it just doesn’t work. It’s possible that removing that thrashing beat could improve it, definitely inserting a stomach-lurch of a drop and making the whole thing sound a lot more like the bridge would — you used to be/so thirsty for me is the most tugging-at-something line here by miles.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: Who knew that two steps from “Dark Horse” was also two steps from “Bound 4 Da Reload“? UKG could be almost as spooky as Rita Ora’s stealth powers of seizure, this time overcoming the contractually obliged subjugation of a featured credit to make “Black Widow” her own. Not “make it her own” in an X Factor way — that means boring — but in a more Rita Ora way. Functional. Iggy Azalea herself hasn’t really been interesting since “Work.”
[5]
Will Adams: Rita Ora’s charming summer single boasted enough glitter to hide her lack of charisma; here, the hook is so weak that her colorlessness is laid bare. But that’s the least of “Black Widow”‘s problems: turns out the only thing less convincing than Iggy Azalea attempting swagger is Iggy Azalea attempting menace. Billboard charts be damned — really, her success says more about whoever orchestrated the clever one-two punch of “Fancy” and “Problem” — there is nothing indicating that she is anything beyond a summer novelty, and releasing a follow-up as tepid as “Black Widow” is the nail in the coffin. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
[3]
Anthony Easton: Another track where the featuring artist is both more capable and interesting than the cack-handed flow of Iggy. The production hinting at the scuttering of spider over web is responsible for most of the points; the rest is Ora being able to play over that scuttering.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: Iggy Azalea is on this song and she’s adequate. That second verse actually shows she is actually more proficient than some of the people reading this, which is nice for her. But she doesn’t fulfil the promise of some great components to this track. Female black widow spiders eat their mates once they’re finished with them. They are clever, efficient hunters of their prey. So this song, ideally, should creep along rather than be a big lump of schlock, sort of like a romp through a haunted house ride. Schlock worked for Brooke Valentine on “I Want You Dead” because she was hilarious but it doesn’t work for the humourless Azalea. Rita Ora’s chorus actually delivers the goods with regards to the bads, but that wonky backing and the song’s inability to build on the climax Ora builds it to not once but twice means that it goes nowhere.
[5]
Alfred Soto: So I was wrong: she’s become (temporarily) huge. Maybe this Ora-sung hook (“I’m gonna love ya until you hate me”) that Stargate might have lifted from their own “Hate That I Love You” will keep her huge, although they nicked the synth arpeggios straight from the pneumatic EDM they wrote for Ne-Yo’s 2010 Libra Scale. We know what happened to that one.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Is there a term for imagery that’s stretched past the conceptual breaking point — like when the guy spins a web — but it still counts because the point is to be smashed over the head? When Rita intros the song, the synths whip around her like a maelstrom; it’s pulse-boosting. But Azalea gets a stripclub melody line, spare and clock-killing. She can’t even put this over.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: Perhaps Alfred really was right, and the charm of “Fancy” was all down to Charli XCX’s Stefani-isms. Rita Ora lets her lungs loose all over the chorus here, matching the track’s build as it gets bigger and bigger. Iggy, unfortunately, adds a whole lot of nothin’.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: How much would you pay towards a Kickstarter to save those spooky steel-drum hits from this song? Because those deserve so much better than this hyper-put-on accent.
[3]
Jonathan Bradley: Azalea’s singles and guest verses to date have primarily been exercises in some of hip-hop’s more familiar forms: the money rap, the hustle rap, overarching proclamations of dominance. It’s part of what makes her simultaneously distasteful and dull. Distasteful, because her entree into a genre whose default voice is African American and male has come in the form of an insistence we pretend we do not notice she is none of these; it’s a John Roberts legalism as uncompelling in the studio as it is in the courtroom. Dull, because by claiming legitimacy through an ability to reproduce existing tropes, she’s stymied her capacity to depart from them; mentor T.I., less necessarily bound by convention, could record “Be Better Than Me,” but Azalea can only — first things first, again and again — insist she’s the realest. Being a story song of sorts, “Black Widow” ventures tentatively outside this familiar territory: Iggy and her man were all good just a week ago, but now he’s acting shady so she’s giving him an ultimatum. As a demonstration of her versatility, it’s a poor one; even this slight departure strains beneath stilted segues and prolix plotting. An artist develops by introducing complexity into our understanding of her, but Azalea has predicated her entire career on her ability to vanish into a template.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: Iggy Azalea is doing everything right to not go away, which means it’s going to be a long fucking time with this in my system so I might as well get this out: I hate you, Iggy. You made me jump in lava.
[3]