Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 08/08/2011 at 3:26 PM News, Reviews

The Popdust Files: jay-z, kanye west, watch the throne

Track 9: “Who Gon Stop Me?”

Sounds Like: Jay and Kanye’s grand dubstep experiment, name-checking and sampling most of a Flux Pavilion song to proclaim themselves unstoppable. It’s about all they do, too; save for the midsection, where Jay’s rap and the most dynamic part of the beat boost each other up, “Who Gon Stop Me” might as well be a mostly-unchanged mixtape cut.

Pros: That Flux Pavilion song was good, right? You hear pretty much the entire thing, and credit Kanye’s “extra production” for making it sound slightly less blown-out than the original. Some people might call that a con; we’ve got different ideas. For instance:

Cons: This is nothing like the Holocaust, and “ixnay on my dixnay” doesn’t even make Pig Latin grammatical sense. (The word you’re searching for is “ickday,” assuming you’re not George Washington.) Let’s take a break from Kanye, though; “like a rabbit, I like carrots. I’m allergic to having bunny ears” and “like, nope” would be bad enough had Jay not sounded temporarily out-of-breath from the exertion. There’s boasting, then there’s not even trying.

Song Winner: At least Jay restricts his embarrassing lines to one-offs; the rest of his verse is solid or at least attached to a solid beat. Kanye’s are repeats.

Definitive Self-Aggrandizing Lyric: Jay’s “Pablo Picasso, rock those rookies / graduated to the MOMA, and I did all of this without a diploma.”

Previous Reviews: “No Church in the Wild” “Lift Off,” “N—-s in Paris,” “Otis,” “Gotta Have It,” “New Day,” “That’s My Bitch,” “Welcome to the Jungle”

POPDUST SAYS:
[starreview tpl=16]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ghs2QedllI