Sadly we don’t stretch to [33.10]…
[Video][Website]
[5.67]
Alfred Soto: Celebrating Kool-Aid smiles and purple corduroys with matching ribbons, telling cops to fuck off while reminding listeners to say “I love you” to parents, Princess Nokia scratches a nostalgic itch and proffers self-help. At less than two minutes “Green Eggs & Ham” is too slight to annoy, too brief to ponder.
[6]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: “Love my inner child/Kool-Aid smile,” Princess Nokia raps, the smile on their face practically visible. “Green Eggs and Ham” constructs an entire childhood world in its less than two-minute runtime, but that line tells you everything you need to know about childhood mischief and wonder. Similar to how “Sunday Candy” was an anthem for Chance the Rapper’s grandma and the warmth of her love, this track is an ode to the feeling of parental love and childhood security and imagination. I hear “I look like my mama in the 1980s,” “public school and two Thanksgivings,” and “you and me, socks on feet,” and I’m transported to the first house I ever lived in, sitting in a room smelling like linen as my mom and I fold laundry together, watching Harry Potter weekends or The Parent Trap on ABC Family. (Matilda definitely also came on a couple times.) So much of childhood is spent trying to be an adult, and so much of adulthood is spent trying to be taken seriously — it’s in this context that “Green Eggs and Ham” isn’t just fun, it’s a revelation.
[8]
Oliver Maier: All of the people to bite in 2020 and you go with Chance the Rapper.
[3]
Kylo Nocom: I guess the issue with this and all sorts of up-and-comers who abide by the Chance the Rapper philosophy of (irk!) wholesome or warm PBS Kids rap is that they never have the charm that makes stuff as otherwise messy as Coloring Book work. Nokia’s forced-smile bars expose the regression of a rapper who showed much more potential on earlier projects.
[4]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The alt-rap “Blueberry Faygo” — a beat so groovy that the rapper riding it doesn’t have to do all that much. Nokia’s clearly a better rapper than Lil Mosey, but that almost distracts from the appeal of 1-900’s beat — the two are not quite in sync, and Nokia’s stylistic trick of repeating words from line to line isn’t quite as clever as they think it is. But “Green Eggs & Ham” is still eminently charming, the kind of retro rap exercise that you could loop endlessly without it really getting old.
[7]
Alex Clifton: I’ve hated Dr Seuss since childhood (rhyming books made my skin crawl, go figure) so I’m not entirely sold on the concept of this song. At a taut two minutes, Princess Nokia’s trying to pack a fair amount in here, with recollections of a rough childhood set against a breezy beat, but I’m still mystified as to why Seuss has been brought into it. There’s something to be said about the juxtaposition of kid-friendly rhymes with darker material, an indication that even after going through the worst stuff you’ll be fine, but the song is frankly too short for me to have a good grasp of what Princess Nokia wants to convey, even if it does sound nice. However, the video does have a ton of Matilda references, which was my favourite book as a kid, so I’m giving this an extra point.
[6]