Boasting a sonic mash-up unmistakably similar to the horn arrangements of Jennifer Lopez’s 2005 single, “Get Right” featuring Fabolous and, unfortunately, Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop,” J. Lo’s latest track featuring French Montana (who no one is still really clear on what songs he’s actually done unless he’s featured on someone else’s) offers all white everything in, shockingly, non-hospital tableaus.
Instead, Lopez opts for more elegant Britney Spears-esque “Circus” video meets Tim Burton’s Dumbo vibes as she shows us fire breathing-inclined women, a strong (wo)man lifting a giant weight and, of course, herself, as a fortune teller complete with crystal ball (yet likely even J. Lo could not have predicted this much money or fame based on her Bronx-born milieu).
In addition to clearly being a setup for our anticipation of the stripper-centric Hustlers movie (with pole dancing by J. Lo in plentitude in this video), the concept behind the visuals is also inspired by Busby Berkeley’s signature “cake scenes” in the grand and glamorous musicals of the 30s and 40s before ultimately attempting suicide as irrelevancy rained down like the champagne that might be so wondrously paired with his cakes. But any who, J. Lo does his elaborate aesthetic justice–or rather, her adept team consisting of set designers, a director of photography and a hair stylist who made animal print hair possible.
Directed by Jora Frantzis, who also did the video for J. Lo’s seemingly favorite current collaborator Cardi B’s “Money,” the meticulous aestheticism behind “Medicine” is omnipresent right down to the last rhinestone. Case in point, J. Lo (sporting that aforementioned animal print hair) walking down a cross-shaped runway or rocking her Ariana-inspired “dinosaur anal beads” ponytail as she sits atop a giant white cake with forty dancers beneath her.
All the while, Lopez sends her usual don’t fuck with me feminist declaration that she’s been touting of late (“Limitless” included), declaring to the man who she’s become the object of affection to, “Don’t go thinkin’ you can use me/It don’t take too much, you could lose me/Best believe I’m comin’ true with a new ting/Oh, you ain’t been the only one/I send shots like an Uzi.” Barring the fact that she can’t be bothered with school shooting sensitivity, one thing Lopez is highly empathetic toward is visuals–white harps, white pianos and a multi-faced rhinestone-encrusted mask serving as one of the most memeable images of 2019 thus far being just some of the memorable, dream-inducing scenes of the video.
But let us not forget about French Montana as well, whoever this tiger-buying Moroccan may be, as he detaches his head from his neck and talks about how he’s “sicker than your average, the ladies be the baddest.” Considering the decapitated state of his cabeza, it’s hard to tell if he genuinely believes that or if it’s just smoke being blown from one of the fire breathers’ batons. Either way, one would be hard-pressed, whether a carnival lover or not, not to get slightly hard over the attention to detail with which J. Lo seeks to give us all this day our daily medicine.
