Pitchfork

Whether in the "Da Shit" original or a cleaned-up remix with Fabolous, Terius "The-Dream" Nash's "Shawty Is a Ten" seamlessly merges the weird vocal tics-as-hooks that made Nash-penned "Umbrella" a huge hit for Rihanna with the easygoing r&b of R. Kelly songs like "I'm a Flirt". A remix starring "your boyfriend Kellz" himself, though, was more than we would've ever um dreamed-- dude's prolificness lately notwithstanding. "Ya know we had to do a remix," Kelly sings here. Yup, it's another one of those.

On his recent Beanie Sigel collab, Kellz boasts of giving the rapper a hit. Same deal here: The R. is "da shit," and "Shawty" is a "hit". Now about itself as much as about girls, this latest version is necessarily less coherent than the previous ones, and the R. pretty much just revisits familiar territory: going to the club, "poppin' bottles of Patrón," and getting "so drunk that ugly girls look like supermodels" (hey, does that mean...?). The-Dream contributes a new verse, too, paying homage to Kelly and cracking jokes about dandruff. It's not the best version of the song, not by a long shot, but with Kelly's voice as silky as ever, it'll tide us over until the album. ("Falsetto" helps, too.)

Stream:> The-Dream [Ft. R. Kelly]: "Shawty Is a Ten (Remix)"
[original track from Love Me All Summer, Hate Me All Winter; due 12/11/07 on Island Def Jam]