It isn’t a competition… but I think we all know who won the Top Of Head Fashion Round…
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[6.00]
Alfred Soto: Miguel’s falsetto, creamy and full, would represent a significant victory in one of his own songs, but Kweli’s love-you-down is at best perfunctory. What we’ve got then is yet another expenditure of Pimentalian energy.
[6]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Like a Spike Lee movie, you’re moving across the floor,” raps Talib Kweli in reference to a scene from the director’s film Bamboozled, though another of Lee’s films comes to mind: his documentary The Original Kings of Comedy. In that film, there’s a famous Steve Harvey routine where he plays a selection of soul classics to a reverent audience, culminating in a recital of Lenny Williams’ shaky emotional odyssey “Cause I Love You”. Harvey rants and raves: “See, that’s what songs used to be about – you used to tell a woman how you felt about her! You can’t tell me Lenny Williams didn’t mean that shit!” Kweli, a nostalgist like Harvey, has made a song that could slip into a new version of that very routine. It sure helps that Miguel’s sweet voice is on the hook, but Kweli’s ace in the sleeve has always been his unpretentious lover’s dispatches: listen to Train of Thought’s “Love Language” or Quality’s “Won’t You Stay”, for example. “Come Here” is a low-stakes but warm outburst of unfettered romance, so behind the times as to appear timeless. Crucially, his lyrics about making like Heathcliff and Clair seem tinged with amorous investment rather than coming across corny. I mean, c’mon — you can’t tell me Talib doesn’t mean that shit.
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Anthony Easton: Polite, well constructed, confident, has some good lines and a genuine desire to make good work, and it’s solid — but solid isn’t interesting or ambitious.
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Patrick St. Michel: Sorry, I got distracted by the way Miguel swoons all over this. What were you saying about Talib Kweli?
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David Lee: It’s so rude to woo me with Miguel and Marvin Gaye when all you really have to offer is a bad case of history repeating itself.
[5]
Brad Shoup: The tap is open. Pop, hip-hop: Miguel will be whoever you want. Kinda wish Talib would’ve let his imagination fly higher than Marvin, but this is his best bet for that elusive crossover. (JT, Kanye, MJB, John Legend, Norah Jones, will.i.am: no one yet has been able to take him to the top 75.) He upholds his end of the bargain with the standard loverap corn — but still, he’s going to be just the second rapper on OHHLA to namecheck Lady Chatterley. (RIP, Twelve A’Klok.) He’s the tell, Miguel’s the show, him and a decent approximation of (yeesh) What’s Going On.
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Sonya Nicholson: Four and a half minutes of urgent come-ons with tension (guitar strumming) and languid self-indulgence (strings and piano) kept in balance at a constant just-this-side-of-comfortable level the whole time. Yeah, that’s about right.
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