Peanut Gallery

Jr. Writer - "Bird Call"

At the onset of this video, one would expect an appearance by the eponymous Birdman. This is not so. Baby is eclipsed by the overwhelming star power of Jr. Writer.

0:00 We open on a crane shot swooping down from street signs (W 204 St and Nagle Av, infamous for being the very spot where W 204 St meets Nagle Av) to reveal a bland-looking guy wearing all black hanging out on the side of a building. This is Jr. Writer, who, in the next shot, has magically teleported back to the wall he just sauntered away from while groping his nuts.

0:10 We cut to Cam'ron in his natural habitat: a fire escape. He begins a dialogue with Jr. Writer by talking calmly into the camera while Writer fidgets on the sidewalk many blocks away. This is not actually a continuity error - rappers can communicate psychically in times of great urgency, such as when one rapper wants another rapper to start rapping.

"Yo J.R, they been waitin' for you, dog. They been askin'; you ready?" Cam'ron is obviously referring to the tortured chorus of voices that haunt his dreams, rappers and fans alike assailing him with endless questions about whether or not the other rappers on his label are ready. Without hearing Cam, Jr. Writer simply knows to give the rapper's secret signal of confirmation - adjusting the lapels of his sweatshirt.

0:20 The song begins. Jr. is seen in three different ensembles: all black, all red, and all dad. Junior has bankrupted his already tenuous credibility with this hat. If we see you with that thing on your head, you are at the zoo with your kids complaining to your beleaguered wife about the gouge pricing of the corndogs. It doesn't matter if you're doing lines off Pablo Escobar's daughter's ass. Corndogs.

0:25 Juelz Santana's first stack-of-cash showcase. He holds it up, we acknowledge that he has it. End of story, right?

0:44 Juelz flashes the stack again. See? He has a stack. He made that stack by rapping and selling drugs and also running this bomb-ass paper route in the mornings before school. Look at his stack.

0:45 The rapping begins in earnest. We suddenly become aware of how irritating the melody has become, how boring and visually redundant the rest of the video is going to be and how important it is to follow your dreams and work hard at your talents so you can do something special that will make people like you, instead of waiting to luck into a brief and mediocre arc of exposure just because you happened to have been friends with Cam'ron.

Jr. Writer raps by monotonously delivering his lines while hunched at a 30 degree angle, hands lilting in half-committed illustrations of the lyrics. He is underneath an elevated subway track, which is territory strictly reserved by the New York Municipal Zoning Office for hard rappers who are hard.

0:50 What the hell? Everyone in the video is wearing the same t-shirt. You know who wears matching shirts? Youth groups on field trips to AIDS clinics to learn about how dope abstinence is.

0:55 Juelz still has a stack of cash.

0:58 In case you missed it three seconds before, Juelz waves his stack of cash at the camera.

1:08 Hey guys, look at what I got. It's a stack of cash. I dunno what I'm gonna spend it on. My mom, she said that I should put it in the bank but I think Imma buy a big trampoline and jump on it ALL DAY LONG.

1:37 Somebody else has a stack of cash.

1:43 Now J.R. is holding the stack. There is not one shot in which more than one stack is visible. Juelz has been holding a loaner stack the entire time. The money continues to change hands for the rest of the video.

2:00 Lil' Wayne begins to rap and never takes his sunglasses off, looks at the camera, or tries.

2:02 Jr. Writer, in the dad hat, recommences the groping of his balls.

2:18 Juelz, stop. You're going to have to give the money back to the props people at the end of the shoot. Maybe they'll give you a twenty to go buy some Pokémon cards or something. Let it go.

3:04 Cam'ron has also elected to wear a stupid floppy dad hat, though this one is tastefully without chinstrap.

3:14 Damon Dash shows up. One guy in the audience goes "Oh...huh."

4:20 The video comes to a whimpering, merciful close with the caption, "To be continued..." Somewhere in Nebraska, a twelve-year-old gasps in anticipation.



Samantha Jade - "Step Up"

0:00 The cinematographer offers a tantalizing bit of foreshadowing by showing us the bank of televisions that will play the same clip from "Step Up" for the rest of the song. These asides, showing the protagonist of the movie dancing next to his car, will take up at least half the video. I have never seen "Step Up," (and by merit of Samantha Jade I never will see it) but from these clips I assume the whole movie is about a dude in a wifebeater poppin' and lockin' while the love interest is all, like, "Nuh uh."

0:03 Cut to a bunch of girls in a convertible Mini Cooper. A year ago, they all drove around in Ford Explorers with the windows covered in slogans about their field hockey team. Now they're free, out and about in the world, barfing jello shots all over their boyfriends' dicks like debauched mother penguins. O, youth.

0:12 The girl behind the wheel opens a laptop and everyone goes nuts, pointing exaggeratedly at the screen, which displays the "Step Up" website. Laptop girl has discovered a contest to "Star In Your Own Step Up Music Video." Are we to intuit that we are watching the winning video?

0:20 Samantha Jade beings singing/whining while slinking down the sidewalk. Behind her, her crew of fresh, empowered, carefree backup dancers go CRAZY with the fist pumps and ass shakes. Somebody cracks open a Diet Coke, the guy in the headband starts rollerskating backwards and Steve Jobs showers them with iPods from his passing Segway.

0:30 The procession encounters the bank of televisions, which are now reflecting Jade and friends. They are all so unnerved by the dizzying meta-awareness of watching themselves in a television while being filmed for a music video that their dancing ratchets up to new heights of freshness. The observer will notice a kind of frenzy in their movements, eerily counterposed by the opaque gaze of the linearly/existentially displaced.

0:50 Having entered the electronics shop, two guys from the entourage start tampering with the merchandise. Stripey-shirt douchebag cashier is mesmerized by the tiny, glittering copper flakes glazed to the faces of the three girls distracting him.

1:00 The pranksters record the breakdancing performance outside the store, steal the DVD and everyone prances away breezily, leaving Stripeyshirt reeling in infatuation.

1:56 Some girl receives a text message reading "Samantha Jade to Star in "Step Up" Video." The girl and her friend go apeshit.

2:05 On wait, the girl is Samantha Jade. I thought for a second it was Samantha Jade's friend. Samantha Jade has no friends.

2:15 The quantum flower of self-reference continues to blossom as we see a camera crew filming the Jade people dancing outside of the shop where they were previously filmed recording themselves auditioning to be in the video we are now watching them perform for, which is still one layer removed from the actual video being reviewed. Clearly, Jade is some kind of post-post-modernist performance artist maven and this whole project is a commentary on the ephemeral, mutually-reflexive cycle of media production/consumption.

3:30 Nothing interesting has happened in the entire video.