…what? Love? Tax forms? Who can say?
[Video]
[5.00]
Crystal Leww: DJ Mustard is poised to have a Mike WiLL in 2013 type of year: a rap producer that finally breaks into the mainstream in his own right and helps shape sounds. His 2013 tape Ketchup was passed around rap nerd circles attached to loud, exuberant yelling about his beats and how underrated he was as a producer. He closed out the year with “Show Me”, a song that epitomizes his style. The snares clap, the bass wobbles, the synths ping, the background “ay!”s bounce. The vocalists here don’t really matter: any combination of rap verse, hook, rap verse, hook would have worked over Mustard’s masterpiece. I do wish that it was either co-writer TeeFLii or Jeremih on that hook (if only to hear them on something this massive), but Chris Brown, despite being a hateful little shit, sounds just like pretty much any male R&B/pop vocalist, perfectly replaceable and just like the rascal he needs to play. Kid Ink goes for mostly a straight delivery with some melodic moments, and he sounds exactly like a charming frat boy. It works out; this is bound to be played at the best types of frat parties in 2014. I am cautiously optimistic about hearing “Mustard on the beat, ho!” a lot on the radio in 2014.
[7]
David Turner: I posted on Facebook: “So there is a Kid Ink Song that has Chris Brown that sounds like TeeFlii, and is of course produced by DJ Mustard.” And of course, internet grump and generous soul, Maxwell gave it an even better description: “So it’s a Chris Brown song that features Chris Brown that sounds like Chris Brown, produced by DJ Mustard?”
[7]
Will Adams: DJ Mustard spins out an interesting repurpose of the “Show Me Love” riff, slowing it down to a crawl that lets the pinging synth breathe. Kid Ink tackles his verses charmingly, striking a nice sing-rap equilibrium. So it’s puzzling what Chris Brown is doing there, other than shrugging off a “you remind me” hook that only reminds me of someone with more charisma.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: “Show Me Love” is one of those near-indestructible, likely immortal songs, carved from magic in a time before time began (or the 90s, whatever), much like “You Got The Love” or “You’re Not Alone”. It takes pride of place in this advert where Pete Tong plays a gig from the inside of his brain for a reason. Unfortunately, Kid Ink and Chris Brown don’t seem to have grasped that reason. It’s not even like it would have took an innovator to take advantage of it – a true one has already shown the way.
[4]
Alfred Soto: The production echoes other recentnnineties throwbacks, Chris Brown adds the spectacularly unrevealing hook “You remind me of something/I don’t know what it is,” sung with as much personality as a TV stand, and the track coheres into a morass of averageness — this after I learned to love “It Won’t Stop” enough to include it in my top ten of 2013.
[3]
Anthony Easton: How this plods or plonks, deliberately working through the implications of the verses, is more careful and smarter than the lyrics. The dissonance brings the whole work down, and as much as dumb work about sex is fantastic, sometimes you want smart work about sex or dumb lyrics about non-sexy stuff.
[6]
Brad Shoup: The Eurodance melody’s even more sluggish than Breezy. Meanwhile, Kid proposes a date that’ll get him rejected on, I dunno, whatever social app that won’t make this blurb look dated in the future.
[3]
David Lee: The alternately frosty and squiggly West Coast beat is DJ Mustard’s bread and butter. Chris Brown’s lyrical “U Remind Me” update startles in its descriptive efficiency, a snippet of conversation that evokes a molly-popping, Four-Loko-chugging generation trying to forget about the encroaching apocalypse. But “Show Me,” for all its minimalist power, barely leaves an impression.
[5]