Our goal is to entertain.
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[6.14]
Brad Shoup: Surprise! The Brazilian artist drops a casual work that uses drums with far more craft. I still feel like I’m listening to J. Cole though.
[5]
Mallory O’Donnell: Brazil has one of the world’s great music scenes, period. Pretty much always has. Someone involved in the World Cup clearly Googled their head out of their ass long enough to realize this and invite someone involved in the actual process of creating music in Brazil to contribute more than a couple of bars to their global event-type phenomenon. Otherwise we’d have a long list of “Latin” A-listers (skipping over the fact that Spanish and Portuguese are different languages and the Brazilian music scene has almost nothing to do with the Latin one) trotting out their regulation dreck-house for the masses. Oh wait, we do have that. But we also have this. It’s not the best carioca track ever, but it slams harder, grooves tighter and makes you want to soak up glorious rays, drinks and bodies at the beach far more than any of the rest of these cobbled-together anthems.
[7]
Iain Mew: In tone and approach, MC Guime kind of reminds me of Stromae if he chilled out a bit. That makes him good to spend a couple of minutes with on a song that fills in all its spaces thoughtfully without ever hitting too hard.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Excellent rhythm guitar lick, and Emicida tugs against it with the right frisson, but those moments when his voice descends and goes tough-guy are not persuasive.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: MC Guime is, according to Wikipedia, one of the leading lights of “funk ostentação,” which basically means he makes blingy Brazilian hip-hop. To my Yankee ears, it sounds like good Brazilian pop. Guime’s got flow, the track has enough baile funk signifiers that I immediately know it’s Brazilian, and this grooves.
[6]
Will Adams: Though the big drums pop in sporadically, “País de Futebol” is easy-going, far less dramatic than its World Cup song counterparts. That breeziness endears in the way it casts football not as a momentous spectacle that comes by every four years, but a part of everyday life.
[6]
Madeleine Lee: According to its modest English Wikipedia article, the “ostentation” in funk ostentação refers to the lyrical content “about cars, motorcycles, drinks and women, extolling the ambition to leave the slum and win goals.” In other words, if “La La La (Brazil 2014)” is to benefit the kids starving in the favelas, this song comes from the favela itself. (The dumb rockist moral superiority argument is to say that that’s what makes this a better song, and it’s dumb because MC Guime would probably be pretty okay with being where Pitbull is now.) It’s not suitable for cheering along with a crowd, but with both the intensity of the brisk beat and the lightness of the guitars, it’s perfect for a pickup game on a hot afternoon where everyone calls themselves Ronaldinho when they score. It’s a small song with big daydreams.
[7]