But how real is it to score a [6.00] on the Jukebox?
[Video][Website]
[6.00]
Micha Cavaseno: Wiley has an odd charm in making brilliant songs out of the most nerdy things. His first single for XL, “Wot Do U Call It,” was literally a song about creating a new genre of music. Reader, I’m grabbing your shoulder and staring at you uncomfortably because I’m both amazed and excited at the levels of delusion and narcissism Wiley occupies: He Made Songs About Creating Genres. Now he’s making a song reflecting upon chart successes, selling out, returning to his core fanbase, and doing that about 700 times to the point I think even Tricky would look at Wiley like “What’re you up to mate?” JME, who managed a chart score or two without doing that, is supportive and agreeable, even if his path was much more linear. Very odd to hear Teddy Silencer taking up rhyming, and I think someone should make a more concentrated effort to convince him to leave that behind and stick to production.
[7]
Josh Langhoff: In Teddy’s beat — big thick ravey synths vs. little plinky plonky synths — you can hear a dichotomy between stadium anthems and and intimate headphone music, public and private. The dichotomy’s false, of course; stadiums broadcast plinks and plonks and everything turns into intimate headphone music eventually, which makes this the perfect beat to illustrate the false dichotomy of Wiley’s verse. Forget JME, too busy being a sycophant and offering diaristic self-affirmations: he’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and if they don’t like it, fuck ’em. That kind of solipsism evaporates on contact with the tanning salons of the world. Wiley at least asks existential questions and admits he’s “torn between catering for me and the fans,” who won’t let him “show skills.” Yes yes, we all wanna be Talib Kweli. But you don’t transcend a tension just by saying its name, and anyway, Wiley’s smarter than that. He knows how to make difficult-sounding hits that don’t simply register as endless swirls of effervescent skywriting. Rap however you want, you know? The trick is saying something other people need to hear.
[4]
Ian Mathers: Wiley putting someone on the song who just outright says “Wiley is a national treasure” is a bit embarrassing, right? I’m not saying he’s wrong, but that’s definitely protesting too much. The music and the performances are good, but at this point do we really need another Wiley song about, err, Wiley?
[6]
David Moore: A song about failing to keep it real despite being really real (really!): “I only hear my big hits where people go to get tans.” An unexpected inclusion in the ad hoc subgenre mistaken-privilege-pop, usually the terrain of mega-rich pop singers who want to let you know that it hasn’t always been like this, honest: P!nk, Fergie, J-Lo, and… I dunno, Drake? Accordingly the beat has a hardscrabble grime center coated in luxury sweep synths, and for a song about working too hard to sound too easy, its impact falls somewhere in the middle.
[7]
Anthony Easton: Is Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals” sampled here — it is in the title, and it is fruit from that tree, but how much I like this depends on the directness of the quotation.
[3]
Brad Shoup: The hook conjures “Lapdance,” but Wiley’s writing-about-process just makes me angry that prime Eminem never guested on a grime track.
[6]
Ashley Ellerson: These UK MCs are not fooled by the industry and their demands. It’s the conflict many artists face when they hit the mainstream: who am I making music for now? What content does my crowd want to digest? “I’m torn between catering for me and the fans; I’m going mad” — Wiley speaks to the spirits of all his fellow grime brethren in the age of crossovers. Teddy and JME got his back though, not wanting to disappoint the “Godfather of Grime” or reduce their talent for mass appeal. As JME spits, “I make music for an acquired taste,” and that’s what keeps these guys forever grimey.
[9]