In which we like Pop Smoke, though just not necessarily here…
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Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Pop had a range and a sensibility that could have easily propelled him to super stardom. Throughout his posthumous album, Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon, he hints at all the musical paths he didn’t have the time to take; in “What You Know Bout Love,” as he pours his ominous baritone into a romantic number, he interpolates Ginuwine, which works wonderfully as a reference point for the vibes he’s trying to channel; this time, his deep tone, which he used to convey menace and intimidation, feels both tender and mournful. Even when he tries to be seductive, he comes off as lovelorn and thirsty for affection, which makes this song all the better.
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Aaron Bergstrom: No disrespect to Hemingway’s apocryphal baby shoes, but I submit that “posthumously released debut album” is a shorter, sadder story. We lost Bashar Jackson too early, but he got the victory lap he deserved, with Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon topping the charts and “Dior” soundtracking summer protests across the US. And “What You Know Bout Love,” the fourth single from Stars, is a clear statement that he had ambitions beyond the confines of Brooklyn drill. At this point in his nascent career, sadly, those ambitions outpaced his abilities. The track stumbles right out of the gate, with an inexplicably long, muffled Ginuwine sample, and once Pop comes in, he leans heavily on the tired 50 Cent/Ja Rule “tough guy with a softer side” archetype. An innovator throughout his career, he seems stranded in territory where all he can do is imitate, as if he was consciously trying to make his own “21 Questions.” He’s actually not a bad singer, so it’s surprising that his rapping is what lets him down.
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Thomas Inskeep: This sounds so much like 50 Cent doing a sex jam it’s ridiculous. And sad, because Smoke was more talented than this — I mean, this couldn’t be further from NYC drill. There’s no there here.
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Crystal Leww: Not to sound like an old person but all this song did when it started showing up TikTok was inspire a bunch of eighteen year old TikTok boys to do a dice roll and then shuffle just slightly off beat and inspire me to go find “Differences” to listen to. I’m not sure that Pop Smoke ever intended this to find the light of day.
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John Seroff: I like Pop Smoke’s music best when his voice and superstar intensity fill the track: “Better Have Your Gun,” “Got It On Me,” “Welcome to the Party.” “What You Know Bout Love” both sounds like and is an early effort from Pop at pop, an effective attempt at R&B crossover in the sensitive thug mode of 50 Cent’s “21 Questions.” Unfortunately the recycled Uncle Lumpkin sample (which I originally mistook for a sped-up “Again“) doesn’t provide sufficient structure to support Pop’s vocal density and the confection tends to cloy the longer it sticks around. That said, the first half minute is pretty unassailable and, this being 2020, 30 seconds is all TikTok needs to get you a half-billion spins. Fair enough but, by the time you get to last chorus, you might not want that third helping of flan.
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Alfred Soto: The continued democratization of the arts thanks to new media means talented people like my students record songs and can suddenly become viral sensations. “What You Know Bout Love” is what I’d expect from one of those modest talents.
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Jibril Yassin: The production feels too anonymous, a “type beat” from the bottom rung of 2011 YouTube that would sink even the most capable of singers. Pop’s delivery is what saves it, his enthusiasm proving he was capable of more than anyone could have predicted — even if this feels closer to “21 Questions” than “Shake the Room.”
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Nortey Dowuona: A sweet little blip made of languid guitar synths, shivering percussion and washed out filters as Pop makes love to his lady love, as little bass drums bounce from side to side of the bed cuckooing them from the rest of the world, where they will be forever.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The Ginuwine sample goes a long way to transmitting genuine emotion where Pop’s jogging-centric first verse falters, but by the second verse the two elements making up “What You Know Bout Love” manage to reach a harmony. The thing about Pop Smoke’s voice is its protean emotional affect; the same baritone can convey menace, lust, or even romance without moving much at all. It’s maybe just a trick of the light — the beat here is sweeter than anything else in his catalog — but to have been this versatile while always staying the same is interesting on its own.
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Andy Hutchins: If you knew nothing about Pop Smoke but what you might have heard on radio or in other media — “Welcome to the Party” last year and “Dior” or “The Woo” this year — would you have ever pegged a sweet little The-Dreamish hook (deeply indebted to the immortal Ginuwine melody it cribs) that embedded itself on TikTok as his work? I hear no one more strongly in Pop than 50 Cent, both in their made-for-rap vocal tones and their deliveries, which can go from scowling to smirking in the space of a bar, but “What You Know Bout Love” feels more like Ja Rule’s sincerely corny jams than any of Curtis’s less convincing love songs. (“21 Questions” is perhaps the only 50 song ostensibly For The Ladies that hasn’t aged tremendously poorly, and it’s a) really not as much about a woman or women as 50’s laundry list of what a hypothetical superwoman would have to be to satisfy him and b) buoyed by typically great hook work by Nate Dogg.) Here, a smitten driller is daydreaming, and devilishly charming; how do you not smile at “Here’s $5,500, go and get your breasts”? You understand the mass appeal, and the sorrow that goes along with someone who could veer from a narrow lane without swerving not seeing 21.
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