This is a very strange Disclosure cover…
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David Turner: Last year Big Sean had one of the best guest verses on Meek Mill’s “Burn” with his top-of-a-money-pile rantings. “Control” doesn’t have that type of energy — though Kendrick Lamar has a much-talked-about verse, it’s just another boring guest verse from the talented MC. He certainly steals the spotlight, but where Big Sean and Jay Electronica archive middling introspection, Kendrick halts the track’s momentum ranting about other rappers and massaging his own ego. In case Kendrick didn’t know, you can send a Snapchat to multiple people when you get overwhelmed with #feelings.
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Alfred Soto: For two minutes Big Sean shows the polysyllabic vim that made his Meek Mill cameo last year a delight, and for about that long Kendrick Lamar unleashes a stream of vitriol that would be the most scabrous of his career if he didn’t take aim at easy targets like white party girls and boast of hanging out with the likes of Drake and A$AP Rocky (kudos for the “your parachute is a latex condom hooked to a dread” bit though). It’s cute of Jay Electronica to inject the sentimentality that these guys would have sought, I dunno, Keyshia Cole for.
[6]
Crystal Leww: Big Sean turns in a fine verse of his usual flow. Jay Electronica turns in a great, succinct verse that’s unfortunately been largely ignored. Hopefully, his album does end up coming out sometime. The big story here is Kendrick, and his verse has already been the subject of so much buzz. It’s a great verse; he sounds militant and angry and hungry to prove something. However, when Kendrick tries to put everyone on notice, he’s missing the point. For a lot of the rappers that he shouted out, the raps aren’t the point. Drake has never been the best lyricist, but his appeal has rarely been about his raps. Tyler’s always been a better producer than rapper. For a lot of the rest of them, it just seems like low hanging fruit. Saying that you’ll murder ASAP and Mac Miller is just mean; it’s like picking on the freshmen when you’re a senior. It’s a good verse, but lyricism is not everything in hip hop. Both Sean and Kendrick take too long to get to the point, and they could both learn from Jay Electronica and, you know, use a little control.
[6]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Within hours of Big Sean handling album loosie “Control” to Funkmaster Flex, Kendrick Lamar’s raspy rager of a verse was christened verse of the year and ground zero for any upcoming autumnal rap beefs. Within a day, Lamars move of naming frenemies had become a Twitter meme. In seven days, the song has gone from event status to hype overdrive to a disappointing climax. But thats hip-hop in 2013, an open conversation moving at the speed of light, a world where you can make Pulp Fiction on Monday and accidentally birth a universe of Things To Do In Denver When Youre Deads by Sunday. For what its worth, Jay Electronica kills it.
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Patrick St. Michel: Big Sean and Jay Electronica’s verses aren’t bad at all… they are actually plenty good! The beat is far more annoying, and seems like the immediate reason why this won’t be appearing on Big Sean’s album. But look, the reason we are writing about this is because of Kendrick Lamar’s Twitter-rattling verse, and that’s the only reason anyone cares about this track at all. So… it’s forceful and immediate, although Lamar’s flow also hides a lot of absolutely cheesy lines (“I’m important like the Pope/I’m a Muslim on pork”) among boasts like being “king of New York.” Then comes the most talked about part, wherein Lamar gets especially gravelly while directly naming several other rappers of varying quality (lolz Wale). This is the best part of the song because of the intensity and ambition pouring out of it, and on a pure sonic level what makes “Control” interesting. I’ll save the thoughts about what this means about the state of hip-hop for people who know more, but Lamar’s verse is the only noteworthy element of “Control,” and even then it isn’t flawless.
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Katherine St Asaph: Look, so: Kendrick’s verse is by miles the best thing on this (though Jay Electronica comes close), but that’s largely because of proximity to the beat, which is tired when it doesn’t drop out, and Big Sean, who remains inept. (Fuck trying, indeed.) As for the diss: there are none! A diss isn’t a diss when it’s interchangeable with a tag cloud. The real coup is how nimbly Kendrick made an event of them all.
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Brad Shoup: Talking about “Control” and its aftermath, Young Guru used two sports analogies. The first was how 30 doesn’t cut it when Jordan went off for 50. But he really got into the second one: Tony Hawk landing a 900 at the ’99 X-Games. The part that got Young Guru was the level of competition that preceded the feat; this wasn’t some hometown skatepark deal. He also throws in the detail that it took Hawk a bunch of tries before he pulled it off. (He remembers four; it was ten.) So if you’re not feeling Kendrick’s statement as an all-time worldbeater — I’m 90% sure Mac Miller got roped in because of the rhyme scheme — remember that he’s landed this shit back home, and he’ll get it in competition. Big Sean, on the other hand, just wants to skip to the medal ceremony; he’s got some nice moments here, but it’s easy to serve up a couple decent shots on extended bars. (And it’s easy to sound major on the organ/angle grinder combo.) Jay Electronica, who is, remarkably, an afterthought, ends up trumping No Malice on his own shit, putting a damper on the land grab. I can’t believe that flow has reasserted itself in 2013 (and just when Kanye had transitioned to sonics, too!), but the ripples are usually more fun than the plunk. I wonder whose they’ll be.
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Jonathan Bradley: Appended to the end of the album version of Drake single “Marvin’s Room” was “Buried Alive,” effectively a complete Kendrick Lamar song. It featured Lamar grousing jealously about Drake’s success, and though on one level it was a compliment to his host, it also made Drake’s own stabs at self-loathing introspection look tepid by contrast. The lesson should have been clear: wack rappers, don’t let K-Dot on your track. It’s a lesson Big Sean didn’t learn. Even worse considering the milquetoast of the Midwest actually found some fire for his contribution to “Control.” “They say Detroit ain’t got a chance; we ain’t even got a mayor,” is underdog fightback that can make a spitter city-sized. But he’s tempting fate with “I’m over niggas sayin’ they’re the hottest niggas/Then run to the hottest niggas just to stay hot,” and Lamar doesn’t take long to show what heat really feels like. His flurry arrives after a throat-clearing pseudo-chorus that stalls only to make the batter hit harder. The best part is the closing extended metaphor that looks suspiciously like a direct shot at Sean, who had just wanted to kick it with a granddad whom Kendrick reconfigures as a geriatric kamikaze. Lamar takes other shots as well, in the form of a list of young gun rappers representative of a new generation too fresh to allow the inclusion of hegemons like ‘Ye, Ross, or T.I. It’s not beef; listen to Kendrick when he raps “What is competition?” His targets got the message; Sean is trying to redeem himself by pointing out he didn’t re-record his verse after hearing Kendrick, while Jay Electronica’s defenders are moping that he recorded his bars months ago and had no idea what Kendrick was gonna come with. Fair warning then: it’s no longer OK to sleepwalk through a progression of religious images capped off by “Jay Electricity/PBS mysteries.” Back when Jay-Z deserved the best in the game title, he rapped “label-owners hate me; I’m raising the status-quo up.” When it comes to Kendrick, it’s not just label-owners.
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Jonathan Bogart: The sample the whole track is constructed on, a chipmunked clip of the Chilean socialist Allende campaign slogan “El pueblo unido jams ser vencido,” is truer, more important, and more lasting than anything any of the above-the-line performers spit. Big Sean is a clueless embarrassment — no surprise — Kendrick Lamar is smart, ferocious, and comprehensive — not news, unless you need pageviews — and Jay Electronica is sturdy and unmemorable. The furor over Kendrick’s verse was predictable and shrewdly gamed out. Even when Big Sean’s not the focus of the chatter explosion, style guides require that his name shows up in the search results every time; who needs to be able to rap when you can work the system?
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