The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

Along with the new album that nobody liked, DJ Khaled released an insane seven music videos this past week. All of them are showy and expensive, and I thought about including a few of them on this list. The bullet-time thing with Post Malone and Travis Scott was pretty fun, as were the motorcycles-and-explosions Cardi B one and the one where SZA restages 300. Purely by accident, the Nipsey Hussle/John Legend one served as an affecting monument to a slain hero. But none of the videos make the cut, and all of them were made at least marginally worse by DJ Khaled’s presence in them. Somebody really needs to tell that guy to take some time and chill, though it might require some reverse psychology. As in: “You’ll never take some time and chill!” This week’s picks are below.

5. Vampire Weekend – “This Life” (Dir. Emmett Malloy)

It’s minor Vampire Weekend. It jams in a bunch of famous people for no real reason. It’s got old-school foreign art-film pretensions that, when you stop and think about them, become pretty irritating. And yet those shots of Ezra Koenig playing guitar in the desert, nothing but windmills and sky behind him, are just lovely.

4. DaBaby – “Pony” (Dir. Reel Goats)

DaBaby hangs out with some caimans, a dwarf pony, and a mariachi band. He puts on a terrible Tony Montana accent to talk shit to some bloodied mannequin limbs. Little kids smash open a Donald Trump piñata, and hundred-dollar bills fall out. The end credits feature this: “Cuban women: They didn’t tell us their real names.” And this: “Cuban kid: Their mom was really hot.” I honestly don’t know how you could expect anything more from a music video.

3. Denzel Curry – “SPEEDBOAT” (Dir. Zev Deans)

How does Denzel Curry have the money to stage these Bad Boys 3 action scenes in a music video? And why isn’t he any of them? I have questions, but the questions don’t matter, since I mostly just really want to see the hypothetical movie that this video seems to preview.

2. The Lonely Island – “Uniform On” (Dir. Mike Diva & Akiva Schaffer)

Consider this a stand-in for the entire Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, a perfectly ridiculous and delightful project that keeps running with a single joke for half an hour and somehow never gets old. All of the videos are great, but this one is on the list because (1) it’s on YouTube and (2) it’s got this: “Got a room with a chair / Got a room with a couch / Got a framed photograph of the time I met ALF.”

1. Lil Nas X & Billy Ray Cyrus – “Old Town Road” (Dir. Calmatic)

A genuine cultural phenomenon gets the grand, ridiculous music-video treatment that it always deserved. Someone please make Vince Staples a movie star already.

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