“Why are they yelling at Kaepernick? They should be yelling at [INSERT UNPLEASANT ARTIST OF YOUR CHOICE THAT YOU HAD TO ENDURE AT THE GRAMMYS LAST NIGHT] instead!”

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[4.73]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Back in 2006, Aloe Blacc was responsible for the floaty, exploratory Shine Through. He radiated unbelievable promise: grimly accented life-is-struggle raps, musique concrete artist, thirsty horndog, patriotic performer of immigrant dedications. Blacc was the type of artist that could cover a civil rights hymn with dueful respect but be playful enough to cloak it in an oft-uneasy modern coating. It was messy, but the album had a winning charm to it. Of course, he followed Shine Through with Good Things, an album that pared down on restless eclectica and wised up on soul tradition; then he became instrumental in making bluegrass fistpump music. And now there is “The Man”, a sonic continuation of his work on Good Things: comfortable, a little more booming, a little less homespun. It’s fine. The song’s hook interpolates Elton John, recalling his words about “Your Song” before grabbing it back for his own needs: “Go ahead and tell everybody / I’m the man / Yes I am.” Like he did on “Long Time Coming”, he nabs a song from the canon and makes it twist to his demands. Instead of star-crossed romance, he’s ended up at bravado, and your song is his and his alone. He’s the man, so be it.
[7]

David Sheffieck: Blacc’s appearance on an Avicii track seemed to come out of left field last year, but if it gives him a bigger audience for his solo work it’ll have achieved an even greater goal than heralding the impending genrepocalypse. “The Man” continues Blacc’s streak as one of the few artists capable of evoking classic 70s soul without seeming overly precious or derivative, and while his lyric’s a little thin, his sound is as infectious as ever.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: This song is bad enough on its own, a smoother version of The Script’s “Hall of Fame” but still ultimately a snoozer of an ego-booster. The most it can hope for down the line being chosen as the theme song for Wrestlemania 31. Yet, in a reminder that commercial entanglements can sometimes be a bad move, “The Man” also soundtracks two really dumb commercials for Beats By Dre which imagines sports as Children Of Men deleted scenes.
[2]

Anthony Easton: Does the intro to this seem cribbed from Elton John’s “Your Song,” and if that is the case, then does that add to the sheer level of narcissism? 
[6]

Megan Harrington: That Blacc is borrowing from Elton John’s “Your Song” to make his song isn’t what’s wrong with “The Man.” It isn’t even that “The Man” never stood the implicit chance next to a song that still makes listeners mushy even after forty years. It’s that all of Blacc’s horn tooting amounts to a love song, and as he shifts his platitudes to an “I” and “you” construction, “The Man” is no longer directed toward anyone listening, but to one specific person. What’s wrong with this song is that Blacc isn’t the man, he’s your man. 
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Cribbing not just from Elton but Miguel too (“I’ll be the _____, you be the _____” isn’t exactly copyrighted, but it is the most cribbable part of a very cribbable recent R&B hit) in the service of trumped-up triumphalism, so unsubtle it’s bleak. I’m pretty sure this song can trigger depressive episodes.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Aside from when he begins to reach, Aloe Blacc’s voice is way too slight for the pomp this aspires to. For the most part he doesn’t sound all that bothered, and not even in a laid-back “I’m the man” type of way, as if he was just recording the sound of him reciting the words as they came into his head, an image the OneRepublic-esque rhyming word association of the verses doesn’t exactly dispel. As it turns out, the reality is that he’d had the idea for the hook buzzing around his head for a long time; it sounds like he knew most of the work had been done for him.
[5]

Jer Fairall: His easy command as a vocalist matches the smoothness of the production: pleasurable enough to occasionally distract from a lyric that offers a nudge in the direction of “Your Song” only to out-sap it with several Hallmark cards’ worth of inspirational platitudes. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: “I believe every lie I ever told” — yes, and preach on. But congratulating yourself for what you got away with requires a better fiction than a Bill Withers grain and Elton John nod, and the 49ers will agree when their heads clear.
[4]

Brad Shoup: It’s 2.5 stretched to 4 and a quarter, but it’s still compelling Philly-soul pop with a walloping drum track that signifies Big Thoughts, one of which is Colin Kaepernick’s, evidently. I approve of his flipping Elton’s bedside frippery into a chest-thumping chorus. There’s just no need to drag the choir in, just more horns. 
[6]

Will Adams: There are about a thousand songs I’d rather listen to while walking through throngs of angry fans. That is, unless Beats have built-in bullshit-noise cancellation.
[3]