That you’re only meaning well…
[Video]
[5.50]
Katherine St. Asaph: A perplexing little waltz, taking a stately sample of French artist Indila’s “Love Story” (Wikipedia: “The song speaks of a love story.”) and grafting on tiny Jersey club thumps and vocal samples that jostle one another to define the beat. The video, interspersed with man-on-the-street interview clips, is stranger still — is the one guy saying “Kant” or “cunt”? Either would make sense in context. I can’t be that mad, though, at people choosing to turn their money into weird shit.
[6]
Al Varela: I almost want to say that this song is inspired. Lil Uzi claws out of the hole they dug for themselves from Eternal Atake 2 by releasing a “I love foreign girls” song featuring a prominent sample of a beautiful French song, juxtaposed with a Jersey club bounce that initially sounds out of place, and somehow it works. It’s kind of hypnotizing hearing these strings interspersed with the bounce of the beat and a muffled voice saying “bass, bass, bass, bass, bass”. I don’t know if I actually like this, but it’s such an interesting experiment that I’m willing to see where it goes.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Indila’s the star, the sample of “Love Story” insistent enough to relegate the title star to a cameo on their own track.
[5]
Julian Axelrod: Few rappers are better at filling the space around a wispy vocal sample than Uzi, and Indila’s distant coo is as crucial to the song’s success as the barrage of Jersey club kicks. Unfortunately, few rappers are worse at crediting the vocalists behind their wispy samples than Uzi, which is doubly a problem when her lines are more memorable than the host’s.
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: I understand the desire for a little guy who makes bouncy Jersey club raps, but maybe we could just let this bounce instead: better rapping, better beat, better aura. I think we’ve also moved past the need for quirky artists who turn out to be not so quirky — or, for that matter, bouncy.
[4]
Jel Bugle: Can’t lie, pretty unfamiliar with this guy. I liked the bit where it sped up, but the autotune sounded particularly horrible.
[5]
Andrew Karpan: What Lil Uzi Vert does is as machine-like and haunting as Bruno Mars, for entirely different reasons, yet to largely the same impact. Uzi’s voice, hiccups that quaver an octave lower than the Indila sample that the record flips, is barely there and yet all that remains, like dregs of leftover tea.
[5]
Ian Mathers: Did anyone else think the sample was “Golden Brown” by the Stranglers when it first started? It gets center stage more than most samples, and thankfully it’s compelling and well deployed, even the bits where Uzi’s squawky voice boasts over top. Feels a bit more like a proof of concept than a song, but I guess that’s good enough for TikTok.
[6]
two songs that fit together about as well as Uzi’s dancing and that beat [4]
The first thing the combination of the different elements and languages here made me think of was Rosalía’s recent stuff and uh, I like this better than “Berghain”.