Nighty-night…
[Video][Website]
[2.91]
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: aka “Love the Way You Tell Half-Truths.”
[2]
Alfred Soto: These two seem to be auditioning for a “Love the Way You Lie” knockoff, although even Em came up with a better opening salvo than “It’s been a while since I last dreamt/Barely remember what it’s like to dream.”
[4]
Iain Mew: Professor Green’s first line is “It’s been a while since I last dreamt/Barely remember what it’s like to dream,” which is both almost the same word and doesn’t rhyme. From there his performance falls out of rhyme and rhythm as often as not, stumbling along a narrow line between being a message too compellingly urgent to bother with such concerns, and just being lazy. The unimaginative strings and the straight lift of the end of the chorus from “Read All About It” pushes the overall impression to laziness.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: It’s fun to hear an average freestyler like Green struggle with this slump of a non-hit of Alex da Kid-core rap-pop, long after these songs have fallen out of vogue. So now it’s terrible and out of touch: all the hallmarks of Brit-Rap. Green should feel proud.
[1]
Katherine St Asaph: I can’t tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like, and right now there’s a limp sigh in my windpipe.
[2]
Crystal Leww: The last time someone made a song like this that was good was back in 2010.
[4]
Alex Ostroff: What makes this utterly yawn-worthy when Diddy’s take on the same shtick felt world-conquering? Is it just repeated exposure to a sound that has long since worn out its welcome? Is it that Diddy is an infinitely more fascinating personality than Professor Green? Is it that “Coming Home” was the cathartic end of a sprawling emotionally resonant album and “Lullaby” is just an isolated mp3? Sure, but it’s also lacking in any sense of humour, self-awareness, or lightness. Not even Eminem could make me care about some dude’s navel-gazing self-pity over schmaltzy strings.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: Pro Green continues his sanitised speed through the career of Eminem, tidying his wardrobe on a Sandé afternoon. Eminem has rarely conjured up anything remotely as pretty though — “Beautiful”? — and Tori Kelly’s hymnal chorus almost ranks as highly as Ed Drewett’s on “Never Be A Right Time.” Both very much prop their host up, but the effects run throughout, and here he covers themes most noted for their lack of coverage deftly.
[7]
Brad Shoup: One of Eminem’s more notable legacies is this sort of high-stakes thumbsucking. It could’ve been wordplay but nah, it’s the cold hug of strings and ponderous piano and a super-earnest, outsourced hook.
[3]
Jer Fairall: He raps like an eight-year-old’s Eminem impersonation, and she sings like she’s trying to rework the chorus of “Love the Way You Lie” just enough that it isn’t technically plagiarism. If an Em/Ri facsimile was the goal, though, this doesn’t even succeed according to those modest aspirations: credit Eminem, at least, for his willingness to play the villain. There is so little conflict or dimension to Green’s self-pity that any possible tension is smothered right out of this thing.
[2]