The Rye Rye bus is coming…
[Video][Website]
[6.11]
Katherine St Asaph: SNES Vengaboys. What the hell is going on with music?
[5]
Alfred Soto: I can’t shake how generic this sounds, but “generic” also means its pleasures are assured. After all, the freestyle track to which it alludes sounded generic in 1987 too.
[6]
Iain Mew: The chorus almost loses me, I think through the strength of associations with the original more than that it doesn’t fit the exuberance of the rest of this song. The fantastic 8-bit crunch of the backing, especially the sweeps up the scale at the end of the lines, is cruelly hindered by its nagging melodic similarity to Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite”. The fact that “Boom Boom” is still as enjoyable as it is overall says a lot about just how fun Rye Rye’s verses are.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: Rye Rye’s pitch isn’t exactly straight down the middle: her first two singles featured M.I.A. and Robyn, and she’s been embraced by Beltway policy wonks far more than she has by rap bloggers. But appealing to yuppie NPR listeners, while it might be fine for the beards-and-banjos set, is hardly a guaranteed path to fame and fortune for a rapper. So we have Far East Movement collabs and this direct appeal to the Big Dance Music of the moment. She retains enough personality to be charming, even singing her own hook for once; and if the result is better than Nicki’s recent efforts, it’s not as great as her first two singles. (But then I’ve got those yuppie NPR tastes.) Come on, kids in America, let’s make room for more than one female rapper at the top of the charts.
[8]
Anthony Easton: I love her Baltimore accent, the slightly nasal quality to it. I also love the pure pop of the chorus, and the stupid genius of rhyming “boom boom” with “room room.” The production is so minimal, and how it starts with preset jungle sounds amuse me, and for some reason the conflation of capital and sexual freedom make me less woried when a woman is working through it than when a man is.
[8]
Zach Lyon: The debut album is finally coming out no fewer than four years after she started recording tracks for it, and it’s so strange to think that a song like “Boom Boom” might inhabit the same LP tracklist as “Bang“, which was released in ’08. (For the record, “Bang” is probably the greatest song she, Blaqstarr, and maybe even M.I.A. will ever be credited with.) There’s such evolution here, between the production getting more and more colorful and Ryeisha’s personality getting more and more pop-friendly. The undeniable comparison is Nicki, but only because of the chorus — the actual-like,-using-your-voice-and-singing-with-it is just as just as much a turn as it was on Pink Friday. It’s all new enough to sound like we should just forget “Sunshine” and the Robyn collab and act like this is the debut single. I wonder how Nicki’s New York stans felt when they first heard “Your Love”; “Boom Boom” similarly doesn’t deserve any accusations of selling out, but posturing Rye Rye to follow suit before she even cracks a chart is noteworthy.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Is Vice putting out a lullaby compilation? This thing’s all chorus, surrounded by verses that could serve as a fine Nicki Minaj Rorschach test.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Turned off by all of Lana Del Rey’s turgid moping over her boyfriend’s video game habit? This girl’s not only down with PS3, but she also invites you to watch porn with her, just so you know the extent of what awaits you when she invites you up to her bedroom. And when she comes on with a synth backing this bright and cheerful, and a delivery cheeky and infectious enough to make Nicki Minaj sound damn near aged (all the while shamelessly ripping off her overrated “Super Bass”), how could you possibly resist?
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: Rye Rye’s pop is cosmopolitan like the MP3 folder of a moderately dedicated Soulseek user: Swedish critbait here, ’90s Eurodance there; Benny Blanco synth tones here, rapping as aesthetic signifer rather than musical device there. The collision of style doesn’t result in frisson, however, so much as a decentered listlessness. The sounds are so decontextualized that the song’s only distinguishing element is an affectless banality. Rye Rye shouldn’t be bound by her Baltimore club origins, but at least they provided structure. “Boom Boom,” like “Never Will Be Mine” before it, is music that doesn’t re-order old ideas, it just identifies them.
[4]