Flex zone (9am-4pm Mon-Fri)…
[Video][Website]
[7.00]
Madeleine Lee: While I wait for the dog days of summer to arrive, I’ve been listening to this on repeat. It sizzles like heat waves rising out of concrete and snaps like the tab on a Coke can.
[9]
Brad Shoup: He wants a solo smash, and he’s pursuing it with a shark’s velocity: no pauses, instant annotation for his toupée joke, that parenthetical hook deployed at every opportunity. Nitti’s bassline keeps trying to push things to whimsical territory, and Quan’s deft, Rich Boy-esque touch does its best to accommodate. I can’t see rappers jumping on the remix, just pop-radio DJ sets.
[7]
Crystal Leww: Rap radio has finally be infiltrated by the dreary sounds of Charlie Puth’s voice, which is completely expected given the way that the Billboard changes have affected the rap charts and rap radio in the last few years. There’s more pop on rap radio now, and with few exceptions like the remarkable “Trap Queen,” it doesn’t seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Tracks like “Flex (Ooh Ooh Ooh)” make rap radio still sound like rap radio. “Flex” is produced by Nitti, who is sometimes brought up with a “Who? Oh yeah that guy” but was never given the proper credit for what he did, especially after this Southern simplicity went out of style. Rich Homie Quan has now landed a great summer rap hit a third year in a row (1 and 2), and it is full of the ad-libs and classic Quan lines. The two are exemplified by the way he personifies his haters: “How much you made?” followed up quickly by a petty “$100,000 just in two days.” I hope Quan never stops going in.
[9]
Micha Cavaseno: Nitti, last seen soundtracking Young Dro riding a horse while dressed in all-Polo for some unnecessary 8Ball & MJG single, has re-emerged from the toxic stew with er… Toxic neon stew. In fact you can’t tell me the filter-madness in the accompanying video isn’t just the files being corrupted by Nitti’s paramecium in the guts of DJ Mustard-formed-via-a-poor-decision-at-Fatburger beat. But that’s not why we’re here, we’re here for Rich Homie Quan. A young man who upon his arrival to greatness was unfairly described as a Future clone despite NOT RAPPING LIKE FUTURE AT ALL. A man who recently punched out a security guard and got away on a speedboat while screaming “I’M RICH HOMIE QUAN!” like some surreal Chappelle Show skit come to life. My friend recently called me about Quan, high and distraught, claiming he “never stops sounding like a Shakespearean Drama.” It doesn’t matter if its the molly-saturated thirst of collabs like “Mamacita,” the vengeful passion of “Daddy,” or here on what should be such a simple and pointless little bop. It isn’t. While former sparring partner Thugger went off into ornamental grandioseness, Quan is constantly bluster and stumble. He raps like the overgrown lanky nerd from teen movies hitting the prom dance floor (not for nothing, he looks like one too). The way he skips and skids around goofy punchlines about how he “don’t wear big clothes like Ma$e!” truly is a consistent pinwheel of emoting, which can leave you dizzy and out of breath while Rich Homie Baby still stays flexin’.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Like a lovestruck nerd who can’t speak without mangling a sentence, Quan hangs on to the three-note sequencer for dear life, drawls come-ons, slurs non-sequiturs (“I wear glasses cause I know these niggas watchin”), and answers his own questions. Pair it with “Trap Queen” as the season’s sweetest we-made-it crossover.
[7]
Thomas Inskeep: Taking Biggie’s mush-mouthed-ness even further and melding it with extreme Auto-Tune, Quan is in some ways barely understandable. That said, his flow here has a musicality to it I’ve not heard from his previous singles, and there’s something about making “ooh ooh ooh” a song’s hook. Upped a point for getting in and out, and getting the job done, in under three minutes.
[5]
Ramzi Awn: Ambitious though Quan’s spit may be, it falls slightly short of keeping up with this sick beat. Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s Auto-Tune.
[5]
Jessica Doyle: Rich Homie Quan was obligated to no one to keep shooting videos in Atlanta. And there is something witty in his placing himself at a car dealership while repeatedly answering the question, “How much you make?” Let’s just make those associations between financial self-definition and social signaling, selling (your image) and buying (if you can) explicit. Points for that; not much else, is the problem. “Type of Way” veered between specific bragging and specific abashment, a sense that the Lord was with him even though he strongly suspected he hadn’t earned forgiveness, and then back to witty little touches (my personal localist favorite: “She got a Georgia peach on her rear end like a license plate”). The closest “Flex” comes is “I’m a bad boy but I don’t wear big clothes like Ma$e,” and after that it’s all generic boasting. He is, of course, more than the sum of his references; I can respect the desire to rebrand even if I don’t like the result.
[4]
Andy Hutchins: It is a rare gift, being able to make every bar of a song quotable based more on flow and delivery than lyricism; few actually possess it in rap, especially now that it has deserted Lil Wayne, maybe the person who used it best. But Quan has had it since belting “She got a Georgia peach on her rea’ end like a LICENSE PLATE” at the beginning of a masterful “Type of Way” verse, and he’s maybe never used it better than on “Flex.” He’s parrying deftly with his own ad-libs to stitch together a riveting conversation, obliterating consonants in a way that would make T.I. jealous, and pulling off nonsense like “I wear glasses ’cause I know these niggas watchin'” — which has yet to fail to make me grin. The DJ Spinz and Nitti beat is a landscape of snaps, claps, and taut synths; Quan is Jackson Pollock splattering it: “SET!” “BACK!” “CAT!” “BACK!” “Flex” may not be the best rap song of the year, but it’s the most colorful to date, and that can count for more as summer settles in.
[9]