Send "Mike Posner " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Ew |
 The sly electro-pop kiss-off ''Cooler than Me,'' may have already garnered Mike Posner his 15 minutes. But the 22-year-old Michigan native — whisked from dorm-room mixtape star to major-label signee the summer before his senior year at Duke — asks for approximately twice that allotted time on his (barely) full-length debut, 31 Minutes to Takeoff.Often labeled as a rapper in early press, the gravel-throated Posner is really more of a baby Timberlake, albeit one with less vocal and musical finesse — Justin with a Sigma Nu sweatshirt and a mild case of laryngitis, if you will. tracks like ''Déjà Vu'' and ''Bow Chicka Wow Wow'' are standard, though entertaining, entries in the new-jack seduction pantheon, all crunked on late-’80s synths and implied pelvis grinds. ''Do U Wanna'' reaches back further, with stax horns and a shuffling, Donny Hathaway-worthy groove. ''Cheated'' is just ugly — does the ''whore'' in question really need to be called out by her full name? — but Posner redeems himself on the shimmery player’s lament ''Gone in September.'' in fact, 31 Minutes’ breezy B-boy anthems may keep the man of the half hour around well past Labor Day....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| As advanced recording and editing technology has become more readily accessible, and as social networking media have made international levels of exposure a possibility for just about anyone, there has been a proliferation of self-made music stars. While there are dozens of nonstarters like Tay Zonday for every Lily Allen, there's a real sense that the so-called playing field has been leveled. Enter erstwhile Duke University student Mike Posner, whose popular set of dorm-room demos led to his major label debut, 31 Minutes to Takeoff. Posner's B-boy sound may be derivative as hell, but the album stands to turn him into the latest DIY sensation. With his relatively thin, nasal tenor and smooth, R&B-infused pop style (courtesy of co-producers like Gigamesh, Greg Kirstin, and Cisco Adler), Posner invites immediate comparisons to Justin Timberlake—comparisons that don't necessarily do him any favors. Posner's singing voice is fine enough, but it lacks distinctive character. In addition to Timberlake, Posner could easily be mistaken for any number of contemporary R&B singers, from Akon and Chris Brown to Elliott Yamin and Ne-Yo, which is a serious liability for a new artist. Posner attempts to make up for his singing voice's limitations by having a more colorful voice as a songwriter. Lead single "Cooler Than Me" balances self-deprecation with some smug frat-boy posturing, and "Cheated" takes that point of view one step further, with a kiss-off that borders on active misogyny when Posner sings, "I should have cheated on you/I was everything you wanted and more/I should have cheated on you/Nobody told me I was dating a whore." Whether or not it's autobiographical is irrelevant, but the fact that Posner dedicates the song to a specific woman makes it a mean-spirited, ugly song and sentiment. To that end, the voice that Posner develops over the course of 31 Minutes to Takeoff may not be likable, but, at the very least, it's consistent and focused. Like fellow DIY act Asher Roth, he comes across as something of a dick and a tryhard on songs like "Bow Chicka Bow Wow" and "Gone in September," on which he shrugs, "Guess I'm an asshole like the others," as he casually dismisses a summer fling he led on. But those songs do show off Posner's ear for memorable melodies and his ability to structure a pop hook. His songs may want for originality, but their contruction is impeccable....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Mike Posner is at the head of a new genre: frat-house R&B. Posner, 22, released two mixtapes while he was a Sigma Nu brother at Duke, and on his major-label debut, he's still at the kegger, beer goggles fogged up with resentments and grudges. In the smash single "Cooler Than Me," he whines about a girl who won't give him the time of day. In "Cheated," he sings, "Nobody told me I was dating a whore." Posner's raspy croon is thin but insinuating; the production is serviceably swank, full of big, club-friendly synth hooks. But does anyone, frat boys included, really want to spend time with this guy?...full text |
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