POPSCREEN: T-Pain ft. Yung Joc

Sure, the title “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” is ridiculous. But that’s not really important. Neither the song nor the video works because of innovation, or technical perfection, or even grammatical propriety. They work because they channel their club-hit influences so well.

The video, like the track, is not particularly original. Just as the song recycles the lyrics of wildly successful tracks including “Snap Yo Fingers” and “Walk it Out,” the video is replete with the apparent prerequisites for any commercial rap video: darkly-lit shots of a club where beautiful women dance around the singer, with money raining down and Cristal in the cups.

But just as the song is an undeniably catchy fusion of pure pop-rap-bubblegum ridiculousness (the phrase “I’m gonna buy u a drank” has never sounded so smooth), the music video too achieves success. There’s one particularly memorable image where, as T-Pain sings “I got money in the bank,” money appears on-screen, dripping with liquor. No longer are money and dranks separate considerations; in T-Pain’s world, you have money-dranks. In the ultimate display of making it big, crisp Benjis serve as Solo cups. Who wouldn’t want to attend T-Pain’s party?

And that’s the secret to the success of T-Pain and Young Joc. It’s a fantasy, pure and simple.

Both artists (and the video’s viewers, living vicariously through them) can “make it rain” like Adam “Pacman” Jones without worrying about a single repercussion. And that’s why the club scene gets recycled in so many guises, in so many songs, and in so many videos. Getting your drank on is simply too appealing.