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“Praising the Radio Songs”, Part 4

Back in Time - Pitbull

A Pitbull video full of beautiful women, product placement, and black shades on his face in dimly lit rooms! I won’t list how many different Pitbull videos this could be, but at a certain point you have to just embrace how willing the dude is to jump on any pop song that needs so rapping (he’s a more motivated Flo Rida!). But, this one is a bit more unique than most of the EDM tracks that Pitbull has been on the last few years, and I’m not talking about the tacked-on dubstep breakdown at the end. 

This song has been out for a little while, but I just heard it on the radio, and honestly thought it was a Fatboy Slim song (more specifically his hit “The Rockafellar Skank”). “Back in Time” samples Mickey & Slylvia 1950s hit “Love is Strange”, which is something of a lost art, as rap and electronic music moved away from big samples (the Kanye Wests of the world excluded) entering the 2000s. Pitbull’s rapping is probably even more boring than normal, and the dubstep breakdown at the end is bad enough I’m mentioning it again here. But, the ear-to-ear grin on my face, when I first heard the song was able to withstand those low points, as the song veers towards the “Electronica” end of the spectrum more than “EDM”. Because, as much as I love the 4/4 thump of 2010s pop radio, not all (blanket term of electronic music) needs to follow the same sonic blueprint, especially when the sound of Prodigy and Fatboy Slim didn’t get score a high number of hits in the United States at least (Electronica was no Guetta).