Our Sound of 2020 Week Half-Week (what can we say, we knew about them before the BBC) comes to a nice conclusion…
[Video]
[3.80]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Good news! I found my lite-funk breaking point!
[3]
Ryo Miyauchi: Have you ever wondered what “Dang!” would sound like if Mac Miller had experienced arrested development since his frat-rap days but somehow still managed to collaborate with Anderson.Paak?
[4]
Nortey Dowuona: I’m hoping and praying as I open the video that this won’t be a nice guy song. First indications are not good. The smooth bass groove is nice, but the songwriting is iffy, the slicked-back synths and 3D-printed drums are dull as all heck, and the singing is also dull. If this was one of the many rappity-rappers who got tired of rapping real good and decided to go full Foreign Exchange, I would still be iffy about the songwriting but might be wowed by the vocals, because even Vic Mensa could make this song passable and forgettable. Not this fake Timothée Chalamet sucker.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: Wan softboy singing ruining otherwise vibrant songs: electro-funk edition.
[5]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: The name of the band and this song should’ve tipped me off, but this is offensive in its inoffensiveness. The talk-singing is devoid of the charm needed to carry a song this funkless, this grooveless.
[2]
Kylo Nocom: When there’s a comedy rap skit by the same title that makes fun of your lyrical posturing eight years prior, then maybe you should reconsider some things. For starters, your video is the same tired-ass Eric Andre humor that smarter people have done better, the fuckboy funk you’re trying to inhabit died when the cool Tumblr kids moved on to EDC, and your Mac Miller biting is an act of complete disrespect. This is really just Blackbear in POLLEN playlist clothing.
[0]
Thomas Inskeep: If Bret Easton Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction were set contemporarily, this would be playing at the Dress to Get Screwed party, as it’s got that early-20s, collegiate, kinda sexy/kinda sad vibe. I like that “Nice Guys” sounds a little like three different radios playing different stations, all bleeding together, and I’m into Murray Matravers’s voice. Also: unexpected horns!
[7]
Brad Shoup: It’s more Balearic than the similarly strutty “American Boy,” but just as blithe. The horns are better for the withholding, maybe, since the bass pops so well while they’re out. I wish Matravers popped, though. He’s smug but, oddly, bashful: rating a thousand casual encounters as the possible participants zoom past his door. I wish he’d written more about the moon; he’s got a real awe when he sings about it.
[5]
Ian Mathers: There’s obviously nothing wrong with profanity, but the rest of this song is so damn milquetoast that the twice-repeated “we fuck all night” jars — not because it’s offensive, but there’s absolutely no hint of carnality throughout the rest of this thing.
[4]
Alfred Soto: The comfort with which these blokes mingle early Mos Def and new Anderson Paak with British wryness impressed me on first listen; it’s not charmless. “We’re too young to be gettin’ too deep” is warning and admission.
[5]