So it’s been in the newz…
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[2.00]
Will Adams: There’s so much wrong with “Boyz” that it’s difficult to know where to start. There’s the “Bad Boy for Life” sample, lazily deployed and looped until the end of time. There’s the music, hookless and devoid of any unique melody that extends beyond that damn bassline. There’s the video, embarrassingly dated and so appropriative it makes “Can’t Hold Us Down” look tame. There’s the lyrics, circular and hollow attempts to describe the type of boyz Jesy desires. It’s like the writers wanted to recreate “Soldier” but gave up halfway, leaving the placeholders intact. There’s Nicki’s ill-timed presence: her verse is boring enough that your mind will likely drift to the other reasons she’s been in the news recently: outlandish vaccine claims, serious allegations of abuse. Then there’s the whole conceit, insulting in its belief that a song this flimsy is an acceptable debut single or way to brand your star as, per Nicki’s intro, a “UK baddie.” No, it’s just bad.
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Lauren Gilbert: Genuinely the worst thing I’ve ever heard. An offense to music.
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Katie Gill: Blatant blackfishing aside, this commits the criminal sin for a debut single as a solo artist: it’s boring as hell. The mixing in the chorus is odd — that bass threatens to drown out Nelson. I see what she’s trying to go for with the verses, but her flow is barely enunciated mush. And Nicki, in pure Nicki fashion, phones in her verse.
[4]
Alfred Soto: I had no idea about Jesy Nelson’s blackfishing — I don’t watch many videos and don’t follow gossip threads. What I hear in “Boyz” is a bog standard rap-RYB hybrid with bog standard Nicki Minaj and a vocalist who practices snarling in the bathroom mirror.
[3]
Mark Sinker: Nine for the way she says “taboo”! Less one for Nicki’s rap only being mildly tongue-twistily diverting! Less another two for beef about the socio-philosophical concept of the “bad boy”, which at least in my own head necessitates behaviour and presence more atypical than anywhere here hinted at…
[6]
Edward Okulicz: When the then-P. Diddy dropped “Bad Boy For Life” in 2001, frankly, it sounded terrible. It didn’t interpolate or sample any great song to get its hooks in, but the way it was produced made it sound like all its elements were first sampled through an 8-bit computer. Would have sounded like something in 1981, but it didn’t pass muster in 2001, and it sure as hell doesn’t work in 2021. Jesy Nelson does it proud by putting on top of the horrible track an even worse song. Deleting it from existence would make the world a better place. Of course, P went on to follow up “Bad Boy” with “Diddy,” which was fantastic, so maybe that’s where Jesy is going next? It’s the J, the E, S, the Y? Couldn’t be worse than this.
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Katherine St Asaph: Cranks up the saturation on its Diddy sample past all taste and subtlety; somewhere an audiophile just died. The track’s blown-out brashness calls to mind Mis-Teeq’s “Scandalous” and Mya’s “Again & Again” (an artist who herself released a track with an unsubtle Diddy sample) — or on the pop side, in increasing order of dubiousness, Pink circa Can’t Take Me Home, Eden’s Crush, or Willa Ford. In other words, “Boyz” sounds more garishly, thrillingly like 2002 than many claimed 2002 throwbacks (and not just that one). As with Meghan Trainor, the indefensibility overshadows the song; if only it were credited to Rina Sawayama or Ariana Grande, people might love it. Even Nicki’s verse is, unfortunately, decent.
[7]
Dede Akolo: In these unprecedented times, all I can do is look up to the sky and scream WHY CAN’T WE HAVE GOOD THINGS?
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Alex Clifton: There’s nothing redeeming about “Boyz.” The blackfishing video is egregious, the fallout between Nelson and the rest of her former group is awful, and the song itself just sucks. Nelson swallows her words as she sings so they’re incomprehensible; lines morph into nonsensical phrases like “I like them tattoos and the moldy” that I can’t unhear even after looking up the real lyrics. Even understandable lines like “like it raw, yeah, sashimi” make me feel ill because they’re delivered in such an unappetizing manner. We all know Nicki can bring the fire, but she’s relegated to a wet rap that reads as if it were written by an AI (“lucky charms on my anklet, no, not cereal”). Todd in the Shadows has mentioned that his criteria for bad music is stuff with the “least amount of good” in it, and thus this wins the dubious award of “worst song I’ve heard in 2021,” a year that has included a whole-ass new Maroon 5 album.
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Scott Mildenhall: There is simultaneously too much and too little going on here. “Boyz” will only be remembered in the years, months and weeks to come through the prism of wherever Jesy Nelson is at that point. It’s easy to imagine her standing by it; easy to imagine her repudiating it. What isn’t easy to imagine is anyone remembering much about how it sounds. Insofar as these things are separable, all the talking points are extramusical. It seems best to rethink, move on and remember that people tend to forget “Freedom ’96,” too.
[3]
Joshua Lu: Even if it were possible to ignore the many reasons to steer clear of anything these two artists touch, the song itself is hardly worth chancing: tinny vocals with fetishistic, juvenile lyrics, a repetitive instrumental that wouldn’t have even passed on a Salute B-side, and yet another phoned-in rap bridge. If this song is to be remembered in any capacity, then it should be for everything that went wrong with every step of its release.
[1]
Leah Isobel: Incompetence. Racism as marketing strategy. Poorly executed 2000s nostalgia. A complete lack of personality or perspective. Nicki Minaj sleepwalking through a verse. Nicki Minaj waking up just long enough to stir the pot. Nicki Minaj, despite everything, still showing more charisma and star power than the lead artist. Record labels putting all of their promotional budget into projects with no artistic vision, no point, no purpose other than grabbing attention by any means necessary. Absolutely nothing to believe in, nothing to pull on the heart or soul, nothing that shows a baseline level of craft or care or respect for the audience. A world that cares about noise, not music. Balegdeh.
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