Bachata singer takes that fateful leap into the 2000s…
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Crystal Leww: Prince Royce is finally getting his English-language push, and wow does it sound fantastic, even if the production could potentially sound the slightest bit outdated. EDM-pop might be #over, but babes crooning will never die. This sounds like the sexy slow pulse of a slow dance in the corner of a dance floor. The potential of those slow dances with beautiful strangers are why people keep going back and enduring the promise of packed and sweaty rooms with expensive drinks. People do get “stuck on a feeling,” some sort of hope that there will be someone at the club after all.
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Anthony Easton: The depth of the layering of this, where the vocals (and especially) the lyrics take back seat to a gorgeously lush production, makes the performers slightly anonymous — weirdly less for Royce than Dogg.
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Alfred Soto: From rasta moves to electronic hooha, Snoop’s protean moves aren’t confusing because he’s bold about keeping commercially relevant. Therefore, “she got me stuck on a feeling” is a lie, to be honest. For Royce, though, imitating Usher in 2004 sure demonstrates stuck-ness.
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Micha Cavaseno: Like a bad cast-off from “FutureSex/LoveSounds” that got polished off and sent out into battle a few too many years too late. Great Grand-Uncle Snoop bubbles around in the ad-libs like friends Mac Dre or E-40 would on their most bubbly, but his verse is tediously devoid of even a borrowed personality.
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David Sheffieck: The feature’s a wash, though Snoop’s ad-libs add a bit to the song throughout. “Stuck on a Feeling” hits a groove early and lays into it, Royce’s voice and the beat a sweet combination, nearly too laid-back but firmly on the right side of a soporific.
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Megan Harrington: In his home market, Prince Royce is so good, so romantic and such a committed performer. In his English language crossover, he’s so generic I’d have no problem believing he’s a laboratory composite of Jeremih, Trey Songz, Chris Brown, and Ne-Yo. “Big” Snoop Dogg used to be better at these pop features, both mellow and commanding, but he’s so bad here I’m half waiting for Sway to demand a freestyle. Together, “Stuck on a Feeling” is a song that will bleed in and through everything else on rap radio and then disappear from this world forever.
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Scott Mildenhall: Moderately clammy rather than overly spacious or intermittently banging, this does not sound like it’s from 2014. It doesn’t even feel like it came from America, more like a great, lost Shayne Ward single, an attempt to sound American that might involve all the right producers and writers, but is still by Shayne Ward. Maybe not even him, though — it’s in fact very much like a couple of tracks from Craig David’s Slicker Than Your Average, particularly “Fast Cars”, only with rhythm to accompany electrosquelch. Naturally, these are all good things.
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Brad Shoup: Half-speed New Jack, with swinging guitars and rutting bass substituting for the bang. I was so sure that Prince Royce was nearing a pop breakthrough on bachata’s terms, and I’m gobsmacked that someone thought that not only was that not happening, they thought the year was 2003.
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Will Adams: The sample of 112’s “Dance With Me” does most of the work here, its infectious stomp running through the whole of “Stuck on a Feeling.” That song was from 2001, Snoop Dogg turns in a verse from 2005, and Prince Royce croons like the smattering of R&B starlets that populated the bulk of the aughts’ radio waves. It’s impossible to tell what year it is here, but I kinda like that.
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