Does Bruno Mars Know “Fat Juicy & Wet” Is Not About a Hamburger?

Bruno Mars’ discography is largely wholesome, so when he tries his hand at sweaty sex jams, it’s hard to take them seriously. (Recall 2017’s “Gorilla,” a song where lusty intent is marred by the image of chest-pounding apes.) This helps explain his massive popularity in the U.S., and how a current No. 5 song about a late-night booty call ends up being covered by children. In Silk Sonic, his group with Anderson.Paak which mines the carnal repertoire of classic 1970s and ’80s baby-making music, musical excellence supersedes intent, like a knowing wink that one of their songs could be about sex without resulting in actually having it. On songs like “After Last Night,” eroticism becomes an object, a means to an end. Sex’s physical imperative becomes shrouded in the precision of the musicianship and fidelity to the throwback pose.

This has never made total sense to me: Mars is objectively handsome, even virile. But when he shares the mic with a raunchy power-player like Cardi B, on their Jodeci homage “Please Me,” it sounds like they’re talking past each other. Even a song drawing its juice from the most sexual R&B of the ’90s evokes Mars as Cardi’s wingman, while she calls up her real lover on the landline. It’s not that Mars also presents a quintessential nice-guy persona—nice guys through the ages, from Barry White to Usher, have also been the purveyors of believable songs about robust dick-downs, but they also didn’t try to be all things to all people. Perhaps it’s just that Mars’ funk lacks filth, absent the atmosphere of arousal that propels sensuality through the history of recorded music. Perhaps it’s his propensity to mitigate such tracks with family-friendly mea culpas, like his by-the-book power ballad currently sitting at the top of the charts. Perhaps the only thing this guy fucks is the keyboard?

Mars has never met a match as sexually forward or emphatically filthy as Sexyy Red, the St. Louisan whose breakout single included the line “my coochie pink, my bootyhole brown” as a feasible come-on. Their collaboration, “Fat Juicy & Wet,” is as musically accomplished as any of Mars’ work, though the shadow of Kendrick Lamar’s GNX looms large: G-Funk by way of DJ Mustard, but produced by Mars and his 24K Magic collaborators the Stereotypes. Mars emerges with the vigor of a karaoke-goer who’s been waiting an hour to blow the roof off the room: “I don’t even gangbang, pussy so good made me throw up a set,” a lyric both cringe and borderline irresponsible. He delivers the chorus with all the sexual conviction of someone ordering a hamburger.

Sexyy always sounds so alive on the mic, which is accentuated here in contrast to Mars’ tuff cosplay pose—she knows her strengths and who she is as an artist, and she’s sticking to them. She hasn’t toned down her funny raunch over these spit-shined beats—one of her finest bars is “pussy like cocaine, put it up your nose.” But the populist appeal of this track does somewhat neuter her imagery, like she’s slightly tweaking the old tropes—her punani is unparalleled, her titties are on your chin—geared to folks whose idea of a strip club is more Rick’s Cabaret than King of Diamonds. Mars’ collaborators Lady Gaga and Rosé join them in the video, posing like cheerleaders and distracting from his lack of sexual chemistry with Sexyy, who looks like she wants to pat him on the head.

Still, there’s something intoxicating about the song’s familiarity, like stepping into an elevator just after someone sprayed with Axe has left it; you may not like the scent, but at least you know from whence it came. I look forward to “Fat Juicy & Wet” soundtracking a 60-something tía throwing ass on the dancefloor of a wedding reception. Bruno Mars probably does, too, and after that, he’ll probably play her a ballad.