I’m just going to jump right into this post. Rapper Pitbull has made song after song comprised of catchy, but grating hooks (provided by other people) dull and unimaginative dance production and “Spanglish” rap verses. For the good of popular music as we know it, his career must end before we all go insane.
Okay, perhaps I am over exaggerating. Pitbull is not the only artist who makes use of the techniques (if you want to call them that) that I mentioned, but it seems that he is one of the only people who brings all of these atrocities together into one perfectly awful pop tune.
The true calling card of a Pitbull song is the part of the song that everyone enjoys the most has almost nothing to do with Pitbull. His two biggest songs, “Timber” and “Give Me Everything” featured Ke$ha and Ne-Yo, respectively, singing catchy hooks that rocketed these songs to the top while Pitbull was rambling on incoherently about parties and women and other things that are applicable to both the Spanish and English-speaking world. The result: there is one part of the song that people look forward to in the song, while the rest of the tune is just annoying. Whether it’s the Christina Aguilera part in “Feel This Moment” or the Chris Brown part in “International Love,” the most important part of the song is not performed by “Mr. World-Wide.”
Like a lot of rappers, Pitbull is featured on more songs than he has made himself. But what is most notably about these songs is how they sound exactly like his songs. Because either way, nobody cares about what he is saying. Especially when he is in his “Spanglish” mode, that special part of the song where he shouts out random Spanish words (“Fiesta! Buena!”). It almost seems as if Pitbull has a quota for language in his music. Like for every 10 stupid English words he chooses to use, he must use one Spanish word to remind everyone he has international appeal. We are reminded of him enough.