Ed Sheeran has been sporadically rapping and doing rap collabs for most of his career so there's nothing too surprising about him remixing his latest hit with a drill beat and a couple of London's current top rappers. And while I have no desire to encourage hip hop Sheeran, I will say it's not bad, he's barely on it and it mostly just makes good use of the ominous guitar line that's really the only thing I like about the original "Bad Habits." 

Best Verse: Tion Wayne

Overall Grade: B-

The first time I heard the original "Bundles" it gave me kind of a Flo Milli vibe so I'm glad they got her on the remix, she killed it. 

"EPMD" was one of my favorite songs on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack and I'm a sucker for that thing where a song is named after a classic rap act and then they show up on the remix. And as cool as it is to hear Erick and Parrish go back and forth on the opening verse, and Eminem's verse is pretty good by modern day Em standards, Nas really just effortlessly carries the track. Also it was really funny to realize that the last word Nas says before Eminem's verse is "spaghetti." 

Justin Bieber's winning strategy for the past five years has been to do collaborations for every demographic he can possibly reach: reggaeton, country, Billie Eilish, rap, EDM,  and now Afrobeats. I hate it. I mean, say what you will about Drake going Gary Oldman and adopting the accent of whatever song he's on, but Justin Bieber sings the same way on all these very different styles of music and most of the time he sounds like shit. 

The remix of Donell Jones's latest single also marks the debut of The Chi, his LSG-style supergroup of four Y2K-era R&B stars who are all from Chicago (well, almost all, RL from Next is from Minneapolis). And then for some reason they threw Jacquees on the track too. No 'best verse' because they all sort of take turns singing lines and harmonizing, but I think Carl Thomas's voice has aged the best of the older guys. 

The original "Lick Back" is only 93 seconds long, so this feels less like a remix than a finished version of a popular fragment of a song. I like hearing Future and Thug on an evil-sounding ForeveRolling beat like this, it's a little harder than most of the stuff they've done together. 

Well over a year after Kem released the original "Lie To Me," he released this remix with a somewhat surprising guest. But Wiz Khalifa is kind of growing into old man R&B collabs so he sounds alright on producer Troy Taylor's new beat, which makes good use of a familiar Brenda Russell-via-Big Pun piano line. 

Maroon 5's latest album Jordi and its lead single were dedicated to the band's manager, Jordan Feldstein, who died in 2017. Still, it was a little jarring to see that a couple west coast street rappers are on the remix to this lilting guitar-driven ballad, which has the same backing track as on the original. I mean I get it, Nipsey died tragically too so it's sort of a tribute to him, and his verse works better than it should, considering that must have just found an unreleased verse on the same BPM and grafted it on here, but it's still a pretty weird track. 

There a lot of women in rap right now who are striving to be the next big breakout star after Saweetie and Coi Leray, and this remix is sort of a summit of four of them, plus the perennially underrated Dreezy. And the healthy competition really brought out the best in just about all of them, there's not a bad verse in this whole track, and I really had a hard time picking a favorite, although I'll give the edge to Dream Doll. Don't really like that beat, though, wish they'd done this with a different song. 

Soulja Boy and French Montana are both kind of one-dimensional knuckleheads who tend to thrive when there's a more traditional skilled rapper on the track to balance them out, so it's weird to hear them on a track together. But French almost seems to recognize this and puts in an above average effort. 

Lucky Daye was a good choice for this track, their voices blend together really nicely. 

There's sort of a running joke/meme about how Polo G only raps over sad piano loops, and it's more or less true although I think it underestimates how like half of the rappers out these days constantly rap over sad pianos. There are quite a lot of sad piano beats on Morray's album, so hilariously Polo G hopped on one of them for the radio remix, and sounds right in his element. 

I mainly know Sleepy Hallow as the guy who made Foushee's "Deep End" into a viral hit before she did her proper solo version, but I guess this song is doing well for him too. Coi Leray has kind of earned a reputation as someone who raps terribly on most of her hits and high profile songs, but her verse on this is actually really good. 

Nicki doesn't really bring the right energy to this track, I liked the combination of BIA's nonchalant delivery and the blown-out bass of the track. But their little back-and-forth flow at the end is cool. 

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »