Not an Eminem cover, and no, you won’t hear better news all week…
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[4.88]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I’ve been hoping for a while that Victoria Monét, one of the women behind Ariana Grande’s meteoric rise to fame, would find success on her own. But “Ass Like That” is not a compelling argument for her solo career. There’s a good song buried somewhere in here, but the intimacy of Monét’s voice and warmth of the production are obscured by lyrics that sound like they were written for a frat party.
[4]
Ian Mathers: I’m weirdly charmed at how much “Ass Like That” focuses on the actual mechanics of trying to sculpt a nice butt (squats! a trainer!), and the soft horns in the background marry beautifully with that persistently rattling percussion bed. Definitely the classiest-sounding song of this title, even with that filthy guitar break near the end.
[7]
Isabel Cole: As a person currently seriously considering investing in a pair of lifting shoes to compensate for poor ankle mobility, I feel like if you’re going to record a fitspo anthem, it should go hard enough that I’d reach for it to power me through the last set.
[4]
Will Adams: A workout song that would never fly in a spin class, let alone for walking out of the gym, protein shake in hand. “Ass Like That” is for the post-post-workout, long after the drive home and the hot shower, for reclining on the couch to enjoy a truly gorgeous instrumental of soft horns and loping live drums. In a market with no shortage of pump-up songs yelling at you to go-go-go, a track for rest and recovery is more than welcome.
[8]
Alfred Soto: I like to think she suspects a possible boyfriend of being queer and wanting envy-tinged advice. I had to keep myself awake at any rate, anything to keep my distance from a muted trumpet that sounds like it’s held hostage.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Did we need a chill, midtempo, maybe Adidas sponcon “Work Bitch”? I’m guessing that Monét is trying to emulate Ella Mai (and Ariana, obviously) with a lush “Boo’d Up” arrangement, but for that to work you need an actually lush arrangement. And a voice less thin — she sings “ass” so daintily, like if she added any more oomph the Wedgwood would break. And a different first line — cutesiness of “gym”/”Jim” aside, there’s only one place where you can get an ass like that in two whole months, and it isn’t the gym.
[3]
Natasha Genet Avery: A song about asses you can’t shake your ass to? A song about working out you’d never put on a gym playlist? I’m unsure why Monét would waste this sultry mid-tempo track on a witless ode to a “guy named Gym,” but as I spent days formulating my take on 2010s Ass Discourse, the track’s horn section and breathy percussion slowly won me over.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: While Monét takes photos of her #fitnessgoals, the track’s doing squats and lunges and squeezes — in other words, all of the work.
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