"Paper or Plastic" is a song recorded by American singer Brooke Candy. It was written by Josh Cumbee, Shari Short, and Afshin Salmani, and produced by NONFICTION for Candy's unreleased album Daddy Issues. It was released as the fifth promotional single from the record. In 2017, Candy left RCA to focus on releasing a second extended play (EP), and the release of Daddy Issues was cancelled.
Moving away from her past rap sound from her 2014 EP Opulence, the track is a mid-tempo pop song revolving around issues relating to commercialism, superficiality, and capitalism. In the lyrics, Candy sings about how women must abandon their innocence to get an independent life. Critical response to "Paper or Plastic" was mixed; some music critics praised the sound while another criticized it alongside the other promotional singles for the album.
Darren Craig directed the song's music video, which Candy envisioned as a satire on political and socioeconomic repression of women and misogyny. In the video, Candy appears with a group of oppressed women who rise up against a tyrannical man and shoot him with golden rifles. The visual attracted critical attention from media commentators, who discussed the possible inspirations for the women and the setting. Critics positively responded to the music video, complimenting it as vibrant and outrageous.
Background and release
"Paper or Plastic" was written by Josh Cumbee, Shari Short, and Afshin "AFFSHeeN" Salmani, and produced by Cumbee and Salmani under their production team alias NONFICTION. Mark "Exit" Goodchild served as the mixing engineer, and the programmers and recording engineers were Cumbee and Salmani. Cumbee played the guitar for the track, while the keyboard was provided by Cumbee and Salmani.
The song was made available on June 8, 2016 by RCA as a digital download. While "Paper or Plastic" was released to promote Brooke Candy's unreleased album Daddy Issues, the 2017 follow-up song "Living Out Loud" was chosen as the project's lead single. In 2017, the release for Daddy Issues was canceled after Candy left RCA to record an extended play (EP) that returned to her original punk-inspired rap sound. In an interview with Noisey, she clarified: "Sony and I parted ways – I made an entire album with them, but technically they own that music".
Music and lyrics
"Paper or Plastic" is a two-minute, fifty-five second pop song, which features a "mid-tempo groove". Unlike her previous material from her 2014 EP Opulence, Candy does not rap during the song and instead sings the verses. Mike Wass of Idolator felt that Candy was making a conscious move away from "the twisted white-girl rap" present in her past songs "Opulence" and "I Wanna Fuck Right Now". Wass also called the track "unusually restrained" for the artist. According to Nylon's Yasmeen Gharnit, "Paper or Plastic" revolves around issues relating to "commercialism, superficiality, and selling out". A writer from Hungertv.com viewed the song as focusing on "the capitalist agenda and societal exclusion". When responding to criticism regarding her change in musical style, Candy said: "[W]hatever I have to do [to] garner a larger, broader audience to spread my message on a larger scale, I stand for women, I stand for freedom. For love and self-preservation."
The instrumental features a "pop melody and fizzing electronics" while Candy sings the lyrics: "Time keeps on wasting, but I'm too high to be wasting with all this yolo and rap shit, my heart is elastic". Noisey's Daisy Jones interpreted the words as a reference to Australian singer Sia's 2013 single "Elastic Heart", who served as the executive producer of Daddy Issues. The song continues with the lyrics: "Living for the days, living for the nights, living for the chance to give what's right, now tell me who the hell you think I am." During the song's hook, Candy sings "Why do all the good girls have to die/ Living in a bad girl's paradise"; Yasmeen Gharnit wrote that the section discusses how women must discard their innocence to achieve independence. Other parts include: "Go buy a life that's fantastic cause all you are is your assets” and "You can't buy love without passion / So please don't do nothing drastic".