Released in July 2012 by Hyperdub, Playin' Me garnered critical acclaim; numerous reviewers praised Cooly G for being able to create a great and unique full-length record, a goal not many dance and dubstep producers were able to achieve.
[10][3][7] However, some critics also noted Playin' Me to be about the culture and lifestyle of London, a portion of the album's songs having stories about riding a bus home late at night, finding partners in a club, and going "down the street" with friends.
[21] Playin' Me mostly shows its main character feeling disorientate, the clearest indication of this coming from when she sings on "Trouble," "Oh no, I see / A spider web, it's tangled up with me / And I lost my head / The thought of all the stupid things I said.
"[2] Journalist Martin Clark categorized Playin' Me as a "broken dub house" record due to its use of "delayed percussive touches, subby basslines and wistful Detroit pads.
[2] The album is very focused on tension and testing the patience of the listener;[7] synthesizer sounds play at random moments,[7] and, as Clark described, various types of drum rhythms are used, ranging from "driving to scattered and beatless.
[24] Ari Spool of Tiny Mix Tapes wrote that it contains "broken-up, repetitious vocals and watch-alarm tweets, [...] and you can envision Cooly pressing MPC pads and feeling out the rhythm organically.
[21] Categorizing the style of Playin' Me as a mixture of mainstream club music and experimental dark pop, musicOMH critic Martyn Young wrote that it has a "slightly strange ghostly vibe" and a "sense of mystery and portent," with "the songs floating along on a distended ethereal plane.
"[25] As Ryan analyzed, "the record is never straight-up ambient, but some of its most compelling material, on tracks like "Come into My Room" or "Good Times," is a loose assemblage of beats, synths, and organic instrumentation bleeding together like runny watercolors.
[23] Patrin wrote that in some songs, such as "Trying," "It's Serious," and the title track, "her voice is scarce enough to pass for the skeletal remnants of stripped-away vocals in vintage dub versions, allusive flashes of context overwhelmed by the sound system.
"[5] Irish music critic Jim Carroll also highlighted how the LP combines several different genres together: "The beauty of Playin’ Me is not so much that [Campbell] expertly blends everything from dubby house to r’n’b as she weaves these tales, but how she uses this to illuminate the many striking songs here.
[24] Writing an article for The Quietus, Angus Finlayson opined that most of Playin' Me showed Campbell successfully achieving the goal of making a unique full-length album, which was rare for a dance or dubstep producer to do: "[she] has more than risen to the challenge, developing her own distinctive grammar that tips generous nods to the dancefloor whilse acknowledging that, in this new territory, fresh creative trajectories ought to be pursued.
"[20] Ryan similarly wrote, "Given more than two sides of a 12″, as has been her MO thus far, she's able to sketch and carve out her own sonic world, affectively leaving her [dubstep] scene qualifications at the door to build something with a little lasting significance.
"[21] Finlayson called the lyrical content of Playin' Me "distinct," "showing how both the depth and the surface of romantic endeavour can be expressed without recourse to some placeless, faceless world of cliché and empty platitudes.
"[20] Similarly, The 405 critic Alex Cull praised how the songs executed its negative lyrical themes: "What Playin' Me never does however is descend into stilted histrionics, no matter how emotional – or even traumatic – the events it chronicles are, and it's hard not to feel a little inspired by this.
"[34] On the other hand, a Dusted magazine reviewer stated that while the lyrics aren't "great," what makes the songs work is how "the spontaneity and soulfulness of [Campbell's] vocals resonate because it's grounded in how she feels rather than how she thinks we'll take it.
"[35] He reasoned that "it's ultimately her skill at painting from experience, conveying "vibes from the heart" without concern for generic conventions, that makes Playin' Me unique and gives it a human appeal beyond its prescribed [dubstep] scene.
"[35] However, Finlayson also described Playin' Me's dancefloor-suited songs as "pale and slightly lacklustre: whether it's a matter of technical production chops or less tangible creative choices, they often lack punch and dynamic, a fact which is no doubt a turn-off for DJs in clubs as much as it is for yours truly at home.
"[20] In an eight-out-of-ten review, George Bass of Drowned in Sound stated that with Playin' Me, "Cooly G has achieved a small miracle in making an album that never fudges the consistency of early singles.
"[36] Ben Ratliff of The New York Times had a mixed opinion towards the album; he wrote that "it's got moments" but wasn't very favorable towards its "weird kind of singer-songwriter" method, reasoning that "the narratives are fractured or boiled down to nearly nothing.
"[23][11][29][32][6][37] A writer for NME felt it disrupted the flow of the LP,[11] a Spin magazine critic called it "needless,"[30] while Clark found it to be "terrible not because of its source but of the disconnect between the unrelated keys the vocal and the piano parts are playing in.