What happens after you’ve ridden til you can’t no more?
[Video]
[4.50]
Ian Mathers: I suspect I might be the only one here who couldn’t hum any of “Old Town Road” — not deliberately, just when something’s that big I like to wait to encounter it serendipitously and I haven’t yet — so I wasn’t sure what to expect from Lil Nas X. A superior Juice WRLD was definitely not it, but especially by that comparison, this ain’t bad!
[5]
Tobi Tella: Ughhhhh, I really wanted to like Lil Nas X. “Old Town Road” is still fantastic, and seeing a smart young black kid break out with a different style of music was unexpected and so easy for me to relate with. But then he released his EP, and I realized why I shouldn’t make judgments on people from one song. There’s not really any part of this I enjoy, from the simple enough to be memed lyrics, the basic production and the short runtime, it seems manufactured to be a streaming fodder hit. It does none of the genre-bending that fans of his EP promise, and it offers no insight into him as a human. I don’t require that artists pour their heart to me in every song, but when you can listen to a whole project and still feel like you know nothing about the artist other than “hates long songs,” it’s disheartening and turns someone from an artist to a product.
[2]
Crystal Leww: Music can be fun, guys, and Lil Nas X is keen to show you how. I love how silly this is from the onset, and its short length means that it never really wears out its welcome.
[10]
Iris Xie: I wish the “Ay, Panini, don’t you be a meanie” hook was made much bigger soundwise, but I will still run up and whisper/yell/DM that line to make fun of my friends. I do understand how his drawn out melody for “Say to me, what you want from me/Just say to me, what you want from me” reads as catchy, especially with the whistles, but this is too slight and needs a lot more oomph added to it for such a short run-time. With two minute songs, I want the hooks to grip on to my brain and never let go. For this reason, I’m gonna sing “Ay, Panini, don’t you be a meanie” with the long drawl of the chorus hook, because that’s how I want this to be stuck in my head instead. A missed opportunity.
[6]
Hannah Jocelyn: Immediate points for referencing Chowder, then points redacted because I am not falling for Millennial/Gen-Z cusper nostalgia. Points given because of the live drums, points taken away because it’s barely audible. It is impossible, in good conscience, to score this higher than “Old Town Road.” It’s not as listenable, the melody closer to a Juice WRLD track (or “Black Beatles”?) than “Old Town Road” was to either of its parent genres. It’s not even as thinkpieceable, too petty to leave any sort of impression. Other songs on the EP are outright promising in their genre-hopping, maybe good enough to ensure that he will stay around for a little longer than the average one hit wonder. But this humorless, borderline tuneless mess betrays his weakness when his strengths are genuinely demonstrated elsewhere.
[3]
Will Adams: Of course the other horseshoe would drop, that’s how it goes with memes. To “Panini”‘s credit, there’s a decent production that goes well with the Nirvana quote. The rest can’t even hide that its existence is solely for memetic purposes, and so it rings hollow.
[3]
Jonathan Bradley: The alt-rock nods in “Panini” could be read as a fresh type of genre-mixing from an artist whose career has been synonymous with stylistic incongruity, but they end up sounding a lot like the moody anhedonic emo-rap that’s streamed its way through the ebbing 2010s. By those standards, this is decidedly unexciting when compared to the sharp glinting miseries of Juice WRLD or Lil Uzi Vert or Lil Peep. Kurt Cobain gets a writing credit, which feels like a gimmick; if there is any “In Bloom” in this hook, Lil Nas X’s lackadaisical treatment reduces one of Nirvana’s most florescent melodies to indistinct sing-song.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Kudos for mentioning Kurt Cobain — it got him unexpected streams despite the main hook’s barely-there similarity to “In Bloom.” Closer to late nineties Tricky than Nirvana, actually. A pity he didn’t write an ode to the sandwich.
[5]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Pretty forgettable, but a far better follow-up than I expected for a song that isn’t clearly aiming for post-“Old Town Road” meme potential. A [6] in Q2 2019, a [4] anytime thereafter.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: How did it take exactly one (1) single for Lil Nas X to go normie?
[2]