Are we ready to LAUGH?

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[2.40]

Thomas Inskeep: Like the Lonely Island without talent, Lil Dicky apparently thinks he’s both a comedian and a rapper, but he’s neither. 
[2]

Edward Okulicz: See, if the Lonely Island made a song about saving money and called it “I’m in a Bank” and it sounded like this (I mean the third verse practically is “I’m On a Boat”) it might have worked. As it is, there’s an enormous gulf between how clever this song thinks it is and how clever it actually is. Lil Dicky bruises his knuckles trying to break the fourth wall.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: There’s an entire quicksand-pit here about how Lil Dicky relates to rap, but it seems like an unnecessary plunge because, from all accounts, this guy is operating primarily as a comedian. So why waste brain power on a goofball who took the Kendrick Lamar part of this Lonely Island song and stretched it out to five unfunny minutes?!?
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Privilege is a motherfucker, is it not? The fact of the matter is that rappers have been working on shoestring non-existent budgets since the history of mankind. Oh I know, I KNOOOOOW, that Lil Dicky’s abandonment of materialism is so beautiful because the poor, capitalism-blinded rappers are so ignorant. Thank goodness “DAVE” could show us how to live properly by leeching and being a parasite. “Dicky” is perfectly OK as a comedy rapper, but I don’t think there’s anything more offensive than having an actual (good) rapper who’s never going to have the access to celebrity like Rich Homie Quan get his verse hacked in the middle for a thematic punchline. Because “DAVE” here might be getting Quan and Fetty some royalties, and hey, good for him! But now he’s blocking actual rappers from getting their chance in a perpetually ridiculed genre of music while laughing at their expense. I hope “DAVE” runs through his checks and ends up dying from gangrene in his foot. Oh, and even in the world of fake Mustard retreads, this might be the worst of them all.
[2]

Andy Hutchins: “Rap game got it all wrong,” begins yet another White Guy Tells Industry Comprised of Non-White People How They Got It All Wrong Song. David Burd is Dick Whitman and Lil Dicky is Don Draper, and the former ad man has a burgeoning rap career because he is the sort of person who can rap self-deprecatingly about himself, but without forcing white consumers of rap to check their privilege. “I ain’t never getting robbed,” he says, just after talking about checking the check and just before bragging about not paying for others’ margaritas. And why would he, having been raised in suburban Pennsylvania, about an hour from where fellow expert genre tourist Taylor Swift was, and coming to rap with a college degree and the acumen to do deals without parasitic hangers-on? He’s rapping about not spending money, because that, like wearing an unbuttoned fucking Jackie Robinson jersey, is “funny” when you’re white and know enough about business to joke about incorporating in Delaware. The flip side, with the rapper talking about “matching Lambos” for his partner in life and business, or the rapper boasting of not having to flex because he has arrived at a station in life where peers recognize his success, is presumably a large part of what the rap game got wrong. (Never mind that the gold standard for success in rap was saying “Fuck rich, let’s get wealthy; who else gon’ feed we?” in 2007, and paraphrasing a legendary black “businessman” in saying it.) And yet those guys are here, with a brilliant Fetty Wap hook and half of a gloriously motor-mouthed Rich Homie Quan verse — one that Dicky cuts off, explaining that a full verse (and the attendant rap cred) would cost too much. One hopes they got paid: They clocked in and out and did better work than expected, making an unfunny joke infectiously catchy — this is a good song, alas, and a paycheck would ensure the joke, destined to be told and retold at tens of thousands of college parties before Thanksgiving, is not entirely on them.
[6]

Brad Shoup: If we (America) turned a Charlie Puth hook into a standalone song, can we (again, America) do the same for Fetty? I dunno if this is ether for Macklemore, but I could only listen to about 8% of this again.
[1]

Jessica Doyle: Interrupting Quan to continue hitting one note over and over again: not good for the Jews.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Here we have yet another instance of the uselessness of the term “poptimism”: a pop-rap song, beloved by the people, abhorred by the critics. “The people,” in this case, are the passionate millennial males of Reddit, who gave David here’s Kickstarter enough money to launch dozens of self-pressed debuts. But “the people” are also, well, the people, as that amounts to enough of a fan following to get labels to get Fetty Wap and Rich Homie Quan involved and get Dave to breach the Hot 100. The machine is running, and the machine is spewing forth this, and no amount of revisionist pop criticism can stop it. You already know what the joke is, and the exact level of competence of the rap. You also know how much attention Dave’s paying to current rap — not counting the features he probably didn’t personally book — because one way to save money is to buy last season’s clothes. Or, in this case, beats.
[1]

Anthony Easton: If a critic spends his life trying to dismantle narratives of authenticity, then one cannot really be upset if silly white boy comedy rappers can afford more interesting performers to guest, can they?
[3]

Alfred Soto: Five minutes long? For mediocre rapping over a “Fancy” bass line? Doesn’t perk up until Rich Homie Quan shows his bros what meter is for.
[3]