It’s been a controversial day so far, let’s calm things down with something we can more or less agree isn’t very good!
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Thomas Inskeep: Aggressive Italian hip-hop which I wish would lose the Auto-Tune; it doesn’t need it. What it needs is a little more variety, because Fedez’s rapping style is fairly one-note.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: With its vowel potential for endless rhyme schemes, Italian might be the language that suits rap second best behind English, and Fedez is the biggest thing going in Italian rap at the moment, with five songs off his album making the top 10. You know it’s 2019 by the sadboy Auto-Tune, but the stop-start side-to-side rock of the production sounds plucked out of the last decade. I’m not feeling this as the best advertisement for Fedez’s talents.
[4]
Jibril Yassin: A supposed all-star collaboration that feels cloddish. Fedez’s hook, supposed to evoke Lil Pump, struggles to liftoff, and the less we say about Wayne Santana’s verse, the better.
[2]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: “TVTB” hinges on how well its four rappers are able to keep its danceable groove intact. Fedez’s hook is fine, but it mostly works because its “ah ah” back-and-forth sets itself up as an effective contrast with Wayne Santana’s five-beat chants. Prynce’s following verse has a lackadaisical flow that would work in most contexts, but it butts heads with the beat, bringing the song to a grinding halt. “TVTB” isn’t able to recover, and all the vocal processing soon becomes grating, like it’s trying to compensate for a lack of ideas. By the time Tony Effie comes in, his presence seems wildly unnecessary. The various sound effects and the beat’s slight alterations are desperate attempts at keeping listeners on board.
[2]
Iain Mew: Like “Næsta,” “TVTB” sounds plugged into a whole world of music and like it could be anyone anywhere, but it’s a reversal of what made that song so charming. Rather than offering a surprising tour of possibilities and identities, Fedez just struggles to come up with even one.
[3]
Iris Xie: This song is best listened to when you are at a house party where you know, like, one person, and you are increasingly receding into the couch, delicately holding your drink high above your head to avoid spilling that careful mixture, and embodying the fullest definition of “not feeling it.” Fedez has created a song that playacts at its genre, with staid verses and a weakly catchy chorus that is mixed together with tropes straight out of a hip hop starter pack, featuring the trio of “woo-woo” trill calls, a random woman sexually moaning, and decidedly unsexy animal noises. Despite its determination, “TVTB” lacks the most pivotal component: a sense of swag that can carry its own weight.
[4]