TSJ go crazy…
[Video][Website]
[4.78]
Brad Shoup: “Saturday morning/I ain’t gotta work/Last night’s show sold a lot of merch”: love it. With an opener like that, you know things are staying reasonable. Despite a couple of Thugger-style leaps in volume, this stays firmly a driving song. B.o.B’s always reliable as a hook option; Tech still calls in Black Sheep for insurance. Last-decade club synths mingle with last-decade snaps; he’s got colleges to book.
[6]
Crystal Leww: “Hood Go Crazy” is on Tech N9ne’s fifteenth album, which is an incredible feat for any artist in any genre. To give you a sense of how long Tech N9ne’s been around, his music was featured on Dark Angel, Jessica Alba’s breakthrough role on television in the early-aughts. It’s more incredible that his longevity has come despite “Hood Go Crazy” being his first song in the Hot 100 ever, but I guess that speaks to the ability for rap artists to be buoyed by local scenes (in this case, Kansas City) and massive credibility. And Tech N9ne is a really great rapper. 2 Chainz is one of the best feature artists of the last decade, and he gets totally overshadowed here by Tech N9ne who raps all kind of ways: straightforward, quietly, loudly, slowly, quickly, backflipping. I am particularly charmed by how he raps quietly right into “speeditup,speeditup, THIS IS KANSAS CITY!!!” The song’s buoyed by a great B.o.B. hook, further establishing B.o.B. as a great pop rapper. We will see if this will spur Tech N9ne to greater mainstream rap success, but for now, I’m thrilled to have been given a great summer jam.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: Rap Blogger Matt “The Martorialist” McCready once declared that ratchet was the great equalizer of 21st century rap, that nobody in the world could sound inadequate on that sort of music. He’s right to be honest. Rappers I love, rappers I hate, and rappers with no personality to the point I keep forgetting like them. Any rapper of any age, race, creed, species, whatever, can usually do really well on ratchet. Except, much to my reluctant lack of amazement, Tech N9ne. Now, I think part of it is due to the fact that you know, this beat is atrociously garbage and somehow a millionaire underground rap icon like Tech couldn’t apparently be bothered to shell out even for a Jay Nari beat, let alone Mustard. But also this dude has been just lifeless since he finally had records that weren’t played by a strictly maintained audience of midwestern bloods and lonely Monster Energy merch buyers across the nation. Plus, when you got Mr. Tauheed “Worse Dad Jokes Than Even Brad Shoup” Epps and Bobby Ray, there’s not much hope for a song like this.
[1]
Will Adams: That bending bassline is the most interesting here, and while I could listen to that all day, should the best part of your song really be a sub synth bass?
[5]
David Sheffieck: Maybe it’s just Mustard fatigue, but the production here knocks me flat: the bounce of the bass, the shifts in emphasis, the layering and effects on the vocals — the effect is like breathing in air conditioning after spending a week suffering through humid July days. Bizarrely, the hook’s the weak point; it’s solid, but a de-escalation from not only Tech’s increasingly-unhinged verses but even the more laid-back jokes 2 Chainz delivers. It’s an anchor point, not a climax. But maybe it’s important to re-center when the rest of the song throws you for a loop.
[8]
Thomas Inskeep: “White girls go crazy, Black girls go crazy, college girls go crazy, this the type of shit that make the hood go crazy”: Basically, this would soundtrack a Girls Gone Wild video, were those still in production.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The second most irritating thing about Tech N9ne is his lack of imagination: if he thinks his patter will drive college girls crazy, I can introduce him to a couple who’ll demur, thanks. The most irritating thing is writing his name. That said, the production splits the difference between Mustard and Lil Jon, the buffet of voices offering several kinds of hedonism most welcome.
[7]
Megan Harrington: 2 Chainz’s verse starts at 1:45, so you might want to take a power nap before and close the window thirty seconds later.
[2]
Natasha Genet Avery: The dynamics in “Hood Go Crazy” form a perfect sine wave, and as a result each subsequent build and drop brings diminishing returns.
[4]