“We will be,” chirruped a voice from the audience, “soon as you do something entertaining.”
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[4.67]
Kat Stevens: Angry man and dated-sounding backing! We’re talking early-noughties Prodigy here and no-one wants that. Dot doesn’t sound like he’s having much fun either, unlike on It’s Over (ft Wiley’s Mum) (“you ain’t got no gun/you’re the one that’s getting spun/so you should go suck YOUR MUM“).
[3]
Jer Fairall: Love those intermittent, sputtering drum rolls, but the chorus is pure latter day Eminem, self-aggrandizement replacing self-pity to the benefit of absolutely no one.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: Hard to convince you’re hard when you sing so smooth.
[5]
Anthony Easton: The question of authenticity, what is real, and what is false, seems to be a game with elaborate rules and and no real world consequences—the vocals, with its moral problems with being entertained, its protestant belief in work, its continual naming of self, and all of this placed within context of an aggressive, spiky, and intensely repetitive musical bed, does little to further the argument that the calls towards the real are worth our time as critics or listeners.
[5]
John Seroff: “We ain’t at the dentist but scream out”? The gig is up before we get to the second verse; “Entertained” is little more than get-pumped music for high school kids driving too fast, sugar binging or getting psyched for the football match. Nothing wrong with that, but if this is the new flavour, I’ll stick to Onyx.
[5]
Brad Shoup: It’s a show-off’s statement of intent, a cross between the last Asher Roth and “Mama Said Knock You Out” (which I’d probably give a 6 on Jukebox Klassic). There’s something very Atmosphere about Dot Rotten: not just his singing timbre, but the way this song serves as a contract. “If my attitude stinks I’ma meant to change” — it’s a totally different insecurity than “don’t call it a comeback!”. In fact, “insecurity” is the opposite of the gesture I hope he keeps it together.
[8]
Iain Mew: Dot sacrifices skill and coherence in favour of power, but doesn’t have the music or lines to make it work (bar the hand in socket bzzzt bit, that’s quite funny). The beats are particularly laboured and make it hard to believe that he’ll be rocking anyone.
[3]
Alfred Soto: A not terrible declaration of principles, and a shrewd eliding of the history of British hip-hop of the last twenty years. It’s like Tricky and Dizzee never existed but LL Cool J circa 1990 conquered Britannia.
[5]
Michaela Drapes: I cannot shake my initial impression that I’d probably like this more if I were experiencing it in a giant crowd of wigged-out, thrashing dudes. Catchy, sure — but, OMG it’s such a bro number.
[4]