Young Thug's new music video is a meta masterpiece
'Maybe that’s the moral of the story: None of this matters'
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Young Thug is a completely disruptive force in hip-hop and throws conventions out the window at every opportunity.
His new music video is no different, it not really even being a music video and centring on how it doesn’t really exist.
“Young Thug didn’t show up in time for that shot.” writes ‘co-director’ Ryan Staake (quote marks his not mine) near its start. “In fact, he never showed up for any of our shots.”
All Staake and his production company Pomp&Clout had to go off was a voice note from Thugger in which he mentioned something about using kiddie cars instead of foreign cars and “a lot of bitches”.
The video goes on to show the scant footage Young Thug did send them to use - mostly just him eating Cheetos and grinding on ladies on a private jet - another scene he didn’t show up for in which a police car was smashed to pieces by kids (one of whom was flown in from Mississippi especially) with baseball bats, and a climactic one that Thug did make it to set for, only to turn the car around when he discovered his Instagram account had been hacked.
My personal highlight is the gaudy, gangster stylisation of the word 'juxtaposition'.
Staake apparently originally pitched the idea that the video just be Thugger lighting the budget for it on fire, but what he ended up with was a much more nuanced exercise in futility.
“Maybe that’s the moral of the story: None of this matters,” he concludes.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments