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Music

Watch Young Thug Not Show Up to His Own "Wyclef Jean" Video Shoot

This is either modern art or an incredibly clever marketing ploy.
Lauren O'Neill
London, GB

I don't think it is regular practice for a music video director to introduce themselves in the first frame of the video, but that is what happens in the new promo for Young Thug's "Wyclef Jean," the first track from his 2016 mixtape Jeffery. "Hi," the screen reads. "This is Ryan Staake. I 'co-directed' this video with Young Thug." Over the course of the next four minutes fifty-two seconds, Staake interjects in the action a lot, essentially to tell the story of how he made a Young Thug music video without ever actually meeting Young Thug. This is a new dimension of music videos, a postmodern mini-masterpiece. I would watch a feature film version of this music video and I would love it. The story here centres around Young Thug not actually showing up to his video shoot, but since he provided ideas beforehand ("kiddie cars"; "a lot of bitches. Like, bad bitches"), director Staake tries his best with what he has. The only glimpse we get of Thug is in some self-made footage which features him – what else? –  eating Cheetos ("I wish it was my idea for him to eat Cheetos, but that was all him," says Staake), sent two months after the shoot, at which Thug eventually arrived before refusing to get out of his car because his Instagram had been hacked – sounds about right. And though I am completely perplexed as to whether this was a signed-off idea from the start or whether Thug really didn't show up to his $100,000 video shoot, it's whatever – I am already calling it for Video of the Year potential. Watch Young Thug's unbelievably genius music video for "Wyclef" below, and give it an Oscar as well:

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(Image via YouTube)