Critical Reception
"In Public" was met with mixed reviews from music critics. Adam Webb of Yahoo! Music UK considered the song to be one of Tasty's highlights, stating that it "espouses the delights of al fresco sex over a clinical electro beat and features a filthy rap courtesy of new husband Nas. Suffice to say it leaves Beyonce and Jay-Z sounding like Mary Whitehouse and Cliff Richard." Andy Kellman of Allmusic disagreed; he referred to the track as one of the album's "miscues thwarting perfection" and advised listeners to skip past it. The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey described the song as "an eyebrow-raisingly explicit duet." The Independent felt that "or his part, Nas appears rather more flustered than he ever did in his accounts of life as a dope-dealing streetwise hustler." For Pitchfork Media reviewer Scott Plagenhoef, the song "is possibly the low-point of what is often a transparent Beyoncé-aping full-length (starting with the cover art, which bares a striking resemblance to that of the "Crazy in Love" single)." Ernest Hardy from Rolling Stone commented that on "In Public", Kelis sounds like "Donna Summer with an action plan ('I'll make your toes curl up and make your body scream/Come take a walk with me')."
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