Boyz (song) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

The song has received acclaim from a wide variety of publications, and has been viewed as a highlight of Kala. Isaac McCalla of About.com praised the energy of the track as "bound to set feet on fire", noting how the live instrumentation of world beats, chanting and crowd noise on the song gave the recoding an authentic feel, and allowed listeners to "nearly see dust kicking into the air at a tribal ceremony as the disc spins." In another 4 star review, Fraser McAlpine, writing for BBC Radio 1, highlighted the song as an ode to men, saying that the singer "likes the boys who fall over when they dance, she likes the ones who act a bit mad cos they're over-compensating for not having any cash, she likes the ones who drive motorbikes and she likes the ones who can cook chicken on a wall." Describing the song as "morse discourse" due to its lyrical ambiguity, and stating that he had little idea of what message the singer wished to give with her "Nananaananaananaa" lyric, McAlpine concluded that M.I.A. still "seems very keen that we should all hear what she's saying, cos that rhythm is hammered across everything, from the battered brass and pixie yells to the drunk samba drums." Rosie Swash of The Guardian commented in a positive review that "Boyz" was "missing no action" and that the song "stutters into life with an inane cry of "na na na na na na!" " before continuing into a "catchy character assassination of Boyz who are raw and crazy and start wars." Swash felt that "if anyone can get away with this kind of superficial analysis of the male of species, then it's riddim rider MIA." Jesal 'Jay Soul' Padania of RapReviews described the song as an "undeniable rump-shaker". Ann Powers of The Los Angeles Times described the song as starting with "a taunt with a hyperactive" drumroll, with the singer "sounding like The Muppets singing the Menomena song."

Robert Christgau, writing in Rolling Stone in a highly favourable track by track review of Kala commented on the video's use of "synchronized Kingston rudies shaking their money makers for the Interscope dollar", while comparing the acute "high kiddie/girlie interjections that's sustained pitchwise" on the song to the vocals on "Bird Flu". He felt that only with the fourth track on the album did a conventional song surface, but that this compositional stye employed earlier contributed well to the "heavier, noiser, more jagged" whole of Kala. Conversely, Jonathan Keefe writing in Slant Magazine felt that this was a flaw with "Boyz", stating that unlike the minimalism of "Galang," it "barely qualifies as a song and is undone as a potential club-banger by playing too loose with its rhythmic shifts." Dan Weiss of LAS Magazine noted that the "few booming calls" on "Boyz" sounded more like "triumphant hoedowns at a summer camp than fierce indictments of foreign policy", contributing to a more calmer and scattered feel to Kala than predecessor Arular. Weiss noted that the cover artwork for the single matched the music video and that the song could be a "boy crazy tune" or a demand for a boy that will "start a war," before saying "given her mixed messages, maybe Arulpragasam is just mocking the ones that do start wars with a faux-fistpumper. Her tone, droll as ever, tends to make it hard to tell." Dan Raper of PopMatters said that "Boyz" is "the hugest-sounding song on the album—it has layers beneath layers, and sounds nothing like its soca roots."