Quoth the raven: controversy
[Video]
[6.00]
Julian Axelrod: After seven years of launching singles into the void with no album in sight, Cardi B is back with a release date, a freshly inked divorce, and a cover ripped straight from The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening. The main knock against “Outside” is that it’s Cardi’s umpteenth comeback single in recent memory; the main selling point is that it’s one of the most charismatic people alive talking about fucking your favorite ball player and dunking on your mom over the “Triggaman” sample. Who else could go from “I know I’m cute and funny” to “This tequila ninety proof, chase it with my pussy juice” in the span of six lines? Cardi been back, but now she’s back back.
[7]
Alfred Soto: “I’ve been cuffed up too long,” Cardi tells us. That makes two of us. The bass rattles, the Triggerman sample slaps, the rhymes jangle, and it’s just long enough. Motherhood hasn’t softened her: it’s made her appreciate pleasure with a sybarite’s greed.
[7]
Katherine St. Asaph: Basically “Manchild,” right down to the blaming of the mom — most of “Outside” is raunchier and Cardi-er, but lines like “I know I’m cute and funny, I know somebody want me, I might go celibate, maybe I’ll make some money” could get grafted directly from song to song, double meanings and all. Also basically “Manchild” down to the somewhat uneventful restraint on what’s ostensibly a comeback single.
[6]
Mark Sinker: MVP here is that very John Carpenter figure (high brisk synth-perc pings rolling up and down one small repeated phrase). This turns this cut from mere geometrical grumblenotes on a collapsing celebrity marriage to agitating horror-flick language, as the deprecated hordes circle the sanctuary and you have to decide where (and indeed who) you’d rather be.
[8]
Ian Mathers: New goal: get Cardi and Shakira to do another song together, with a verrrrry different vibe from “Puntería” this time.
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: Cardi needs to fire Pardison and PopLord. Anyone who writes/produces this and feels a sense of pride should not be getting writing checks.
[0]
Taylor Alatorre: Anger as a substitute for flow and precision – this can work, but only if you aren’t too far removed from the source of that anger to channel it with raw immediacy, as Cardi seems to be here. She raps like she’s been assigned the role of a vengeful Cardi B in a future biopic, and is afraid to deviate too far from the script, even when it voyeuristically demands that she describe herself as “small and tiny,” “cute and funny,” etc. The incongruence of physical slightness and non-physical presence could’ve been a productive tension, but it’s hard to come off as the bigger person when you’re slipping arena crowd chants into the mix, or stressing over empty status markers; like, why even bring LeBron’s wife into this?
[4]
Andrew Karpan: A record as rough and messy as its subject, its bitterness keeps it floating, ominous cloud-like, above her smoother, bouncier, perhaps better, records covering similar subject matter (“WAP,” “Up” et. al.) But when it hits, her percussive voice ringing I’m a big freak, come and get a sneak peek, back it up like beep-beep, it hits.
[8]