In which Terius indulges further his passion for saying naughty words.
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[5.50]
Jer Fairall: Veers so close to a Prince parody that it feels like the work of a dirty minded Weird Al Yankovic.
[4]
Michaela Drapes: I guess it’s okay when The-Dream apes Prince, but I mostly find it really annoying. He’s got all the details right, but it’s such slavishly shallow homage that I don’t have any respect for him when all the heavy breathing is over.
[3]
Doug Robertson: What it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in… well, nothing, really. It’s a pretty unpleasant slice of self-aggrandising misogyny whose only real redeeming feature is that musically it sounds like it should be on the Top Gun soundtrack. Which is the sole reason why it’s getting a couple of points from me.
[2]
Jonathan Bradley: The-Dream’s trick here is in making sex sound like a suicide; “Before you leave, fuck my brains out” as a response to a cheating lover is so self-destructive that the immolation approaches the physical. By the second verse, the woman is in tears, mute, and left “laying in the sheets.” The nominal intent is to demonstrate the singer’s prowess as a lover, but it better demonstrates his prowess as a Prince disciple; as a character, The-Dream is practically absent from his own narrative. He is there primarily as a ruinous force, a demon embodiment of downfall stemming from temptation and pride. With this synth duststorm and that deliberately unfeeling vocal, the boudoir turns hellish.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Just when I thought he’d run out of shawties to fuck and/or fuck with, here’s more brains to fuck and/or blow. The guitar and vocal harmonizing all over the intro is a fabulous trick — a better one than the unfortunate one who has to receive his ambitious member.
[6]
Alex Ostroff: An update of “Fast Car” that’s dirtier, both musically and lyrically. Where the earlier track was an attempt at seduction that found Terius worried that his girl was “a little too sweet,” “Fuck My Brains Out” finds our intrepid Casanova servicing his soon-to-be-ex in between newer conquests, indulging her need for his sexual prowess “one more time for the road.” The entire scenario is palpably ridiculous, but this wouldn’t be the first time that The-Dream engaged in elaborate post-breakup revenge fantasies. In the past, these songs sounded tortured, with cries of anguish and betrayal submerged in heavy production. Not so here. Terius audibly relishes every word of “Fuck My Brains Out,” lasciviously declaring that he “done her round the clock, twenty-leven times a week,” “talking with [his] tongue ’til she couldn’t speak,” and even imitating her pleas in both the chorus and the coda. Meanwhile, he’s deployed every trick in his Purple box, from “Kiss”-style funk guitar decorating the verses, to panting, hissing and screaming, to an electric guitar line that grinds itself into the ground. That he manages to make “Fuck My Brains Out” sound like the most deliriously joyful phrase in music is merely an added bonus. (Cee-Lo, take notes.)
[9]
Anthony Easton: Pretty sweet little funk nugget, nothing as lurid as the title would suggest, but worthwhile none-the-less.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: The-Dream is like critical royalty so one must tread and listen carefully, but if this chorus had been the work of The Lonely Island it would be embarrassing, and really, it is. And you could be forgiven based on how awful some of the lyrics are — I mean, rhyming “lick it” and “stick it” pretty much is admitting you ran out of ideas. Musically it’s stronger than that, but overcooked as it bludgeons you with elements that on their own might have been sexy, but are a little hard to take together.
[5]