Kirko Bangz Is Really Nice (Probably)

Yesterday, I was cordially invited to attend a video shoot for the song “Drank In My Cup (Remix),” by Kirko Bangz featuring 2 Chainz and Juelz Santana. 2 Chainz is very famous because he just appeared on the new Nicki Minaj single, as well as Kanye West’s most recent song. He used to be in a duo called Playaz Circle. Juelz Santana is in a group called Dipset, which is a fact you probably knew but since you might have clicked through to this article from an article about pooping on acid or something, I thought I should mention it. Kirko Bangz is from Houston. He has never been in Nirvana.

Besides having one of the top five names in rap right now, Kirko Bangz is notable for making something that I’d loosely term “post-screw” music—not the type of stuff you’d throw on after some good old-fashioned coitus, but more like his music takes the menacing crawl of his city’s chopped and screwed sound and applies it to, like, non-annoying strains of dubstep. In other words, he tends to rap over Drake beats, which he does with varying degrees of success on The Progression 2—A Young Texas Playa. Somebody thought it would be cute to get him and Juelz and 2 Chainz on a song together, probably because all of their names have Z’s in them.

Anyways, the plot of the music video for “Drank In My Cup (Remix)” is as such: Kirko Bangz, Juelz Santana and 2 Chainz all decided to have a party and there were lots of girls there, as well as a bunch of Ciroc vodka, though it should be noted that it was never established whether or not the girls had brought the Ciroc. Also, there were cups. People were drinking out of them.

However, the plot of my trip to the shoot of “Drank In My Cup (Remix)” was more like what actually happens when people go to war: Lots of standing around and not quite being told what to do, followed by being told to move different places, then a burst of intense action followed by death. At first, nobody who wasn’t helping set up was allowed on the set, which was in the apartment of some girl who had consented to allow cameras to usurp her living space for basically the entire day, and so I hung out outside and talked to people. I met one guy who had the best business card I have ever seen.

After an hour and a half or so of this, I was finally allowed into the apartment, where I talked to the gracious host, who offered me some cranberry juice and some vodka out of what must have been the largest bottle of Grey Goose in the entire universe. Right as I was about to get some free booze, however, some guy yelled that all media had to leave the apartment, because Juelz Santana had just shown up in a Rolls Royce and we weren’t allowed to make eye contact with him (or something). So, I went back outside and started talking to someone who I’m fairly certain very quickly became my new best friend, but whose name I will not use out of respect, and by out of respect I mean out of FEAR. I asked him what his job was on the shoot, and he said that he “worked something like security,” but people tended to call him “The Mayor.” Before I could ask what that meant, some guy who was coming up the stairs patted him on the shoulder and said, “This guy’s The Mayor,” and I understood that everyone understood this person to be powerful, and I should not question that. After that, we talked about how the shoot had gone so far, and he said that he was “certain” that the shoot would go well, kind of like how someone is “certain” that a boxing match will go well because they have paid a horse to charge into the ring and kick the other boxer’s opponent in the face (also, this is a boxing match that takes place in an alternate reality).

When I was finally allowed back inside, Juelz Santana was nowhere to be found, and neither was Kirko Bangz, whose turn it was to be filmed—even though they made a song with each other, it seemed like the minds behind “Drank in my Cup (Remix)” weren’t good enough friends to be in lots of shots together. I spent a while seriously considering whether or not Santana the Great’s disappearance had anything to do with the fact that Dipset ran New York for the better part of the 2000s, to the point where it seemed like they were all superheroes. Maybe Juelz’z power was teleportation, even though he was probably just in the back hanging out with his friends. Shortly after abandoning my “Juelz Santana Is A Magical Sprite” theory, I asked Kirko’s publicist if I could interview him. She said, “Yeah, he’s really nice! But he’s getting a haircut right now.” I asked forty-five minutes later, and he was still getting his haircut, so I got annoyed and left. I later Googled it, and apparently 45 minutes is a totally normal amount of time for a dude to get his hair cut by a professional stylist, which he probably had. Sorry Kirko Bangz! That one is totally my fault.

What you've just seen is the normal, non-remix video for "Drank in My Cup."