We believe you Webbie, you don’t have to convince us.
[Video][Website]
[4.43]
Jonathan Bradley: Deep South mainstay Trill Entertainment has seen better days. After the label made itself ground zero of one of the most vibrant rap scenes in the country in the mid to late ’00s, up-and-comer Lil Phat was murdered; Mouse on tha Track, the producer that gave Trill its hyperactive, elastic sound, went his own way; and Boosie, the closest thing rap has to a modern day Pac, spent years in jail, where he remains while the State of Louisiana tries to make a murder charge stick to him. Webbie was responsible for the label’s biggest hit, 2007’s sort-of feminist and entirely infectious club hit “I.N.D.E.P.E.N.D.E.N.T.,” and though more workmanlike than Boosie, he occasionally managed to outrap his more charismatic counterpart (on “Better Believe It,” for instance). “What I Do,” though, could handle an assist from one of Trill’s now unavailable livewires. Chicagoan producer TraBeats sends an appropriately rickety beat down South — nervy stabs and bottom heavy bass — and Webbie’s still got heart, but it’s not transfixing the way the best Baton Rouge rap is.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: A boast needs to sound big to fit a swollen ego, not sound like it’s come out of someone who’s been shrunk. This whole thing’s too damp for the dancefloor and too mild to do much else. The spare twitch of the production would be effective on something with more personality or intensity — you can hear momentum at the end of the first verse but the rest doesn’t unsettle or move. The monotony is broken by the hook, but it’s not a relief — it’s a stinker.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Brain-dead hook chanted with conviction by one of Trill’s house acts, who scored with “Independent” in 2008. We need a moratorium on the mixing board trick of slowing the vocals.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Webbie goes above and beyond against hand-me-down Diplo pings and an awful chorus chirped by a pipsqueak extraterrestrial. The track thumps and sparks like a peak-hour body shop, but dude has got to spring for top-notch labor.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: The production knocks portentously like a cheap knockoff of Lex Luger several years out of date; Webbie intones drearily over top of it as though he’s as in need of convincing as anyone else.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Even the hook sounds unimpressed with itself – “this is really me/this really what I do,” delivered with concealed disappointment rather than boisterousness.
[4]
Anthony Easton: I am not sure that you should be so proud of what you do, if what you do is make generic pussy-baiting hip-hop.
[3]