Slayyyter Crank 2 video

Despite Barack Obama still being president at the start of the 2010s, there were early signs in certain musicians’ work that the decay of America was alive and well (and only about to “pop off” all the more in the years that followed). Among the most mainstream artists to convey this were Lana Del Rey and Lady Gaga. Both of whom, incidentally, came up together on the Lower East Side (though, to “Lizzy Grant’s” dismay, “Stefani Germanotta” got famous before her). While Gaga’s first album, The Fame, was representative of the genre now known as “recession pop” (which Kesha and Katy Perry are meant to embody the most), with her second, Born This Way, in 2011, Gaga veered toward the kind of sonic explorations of decay that Del Rey would become known for both in her lyrics and the visuals that accompanied them (e.g., Tropico). And one of the prime examples of that musical grime and grit was “Judas.” Along with its video, co-directed by Gaga and Laurieann Gibson, which presents the former in a kind of Mary Magdalene role. That is, when she’s not also playing a “biker babe.”

Indeed, considering that the video for “Judas” was released well before Lana Del Rey’s famous “Ride” video in 2012, it can be argued that Del Rey “nicked” a bit of that aesthetic from Gaga, who also “just rides” at the beginning of her “Judas” video with a biker gang that has ostensibly made her their “goddess” the way the busted men in Del Rey’s video do for her. Each video, in its own way, simultaneously spotlights and romanticizes a sense of “Americana in decay.” The same goes for Slayyyter’s “sequel” to “Crank,” “Crank 2.” Indeed, Slayyyter has taken up the mantle in general from Gaga and Del Rey in different ways (though it’s only Gaga who has publicly announced, “I LOVE Slayyyter”). When it comes to the latter, it’s all about the aesthetics that Slayyyter relishes employing, something she made no secret of when initially promoting WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA with an album trailer that was chock-full of Del Rey-esque visuals and mannerisms.

With “Crank 2,” that “tradition,” as it were, continues with the next iteration of WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA: WOR$T MAN IN AMERICA. Granted, Slayyyter takes that tradition to some darker places, starting with the opening scene of the wind billowing in her hair as she stands beneath a bunny scarecrow. Bunnies, of course, being an ongoing “totem” throughout the videos she’s released during this era, explaining to Vogue of the animal’s pervasiveness, “My mom loved bunnies so there’s probably four hundred bunny plates and statues and figurines and all that all over my house. I feel like it’s almost a weird kind of fever-dream nod to that.”

At another point in talking about how the rabbit came to be such a “thing” in WGIA visuals, Slayyyter also mentioned to Popcast, “Women of a certain age love to have, like, a focus animal in their home… So my mother’s favorite is bunnies and so I think a lot with this album, it’s almost, like, this culmination of all these things from my childhood and all these memories I have and putting it into a visual landscape in a way where it’s almost like you’re having a bad dream and you’re remembering things wrong. Where it’s not like a little bunny lamp or a bunny ceramic, it’s a creepy bunny man in the corner of the room… I feel like there’s a lot of symbolism in all these videos… I love…any kind of visual that feels, like, a bit of, like, a strange nightmare… Something’s just a little off.”

In many respects, the same characterization can be given to the early 2010s visuals of Gaga and Del Rey, even for as “polished” as those visuals are. Perhaps because, at the time, America was still capable of having a kind of varnish splashed over its less-palpable-than-today decay. To be sure, that was in large part due to the “HOPE” spurred by the election of Obama, which many believed would signal a genuine change in the trajectory of U.S. politics and policy. But then came the “pendulum swing” (i.e., whiplash) of the 2016 election that made it all but impossible to mask the decay.

Even so, Slayyyter does her best do just that through the “something off” feel of “Crank 2.” Which is also characterized by a certain similarity to Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” video in that she, too, has a slew of people dress up in her signature “uniform” of denim cutoff shorts, a white t-shirt, a trucker hat and calf-high boots (trading in the high heels she wears in the original “Crank” video) for a collective look that only adds to the overall unsettling effect of the black-and-white video (the B&W “trope” not only echoing the opening part of Gaga’s “Judas” video, but also Charli XCX’s Music, Fashion, Film shtick of the moment). One that is further layered on at around the sixteen-second mark, when two men in cornrows appear in front of the “Slayyyter-branded” American flag (this, too, being very Del Rey), one with a question mark in black “spray-painted” on his face, and the other with an exclamation point.

As the warped, distorted sounds that characterize the intro to “Crank 2” give way to the notes that are closer-sounding to the original, Slayyyter lets her hair whip in the wind in front of a cornstalk and intercuts a shot from the “brand new chanel$” video of her on a football field (swapping out the baseball field of the original “Crank” video) dressed in what can best be described as a “Midwest-chic” take on a drum major-meets-football player’s uniform.

Once the heavy panting of the song begins, Slayyyter herself appears in front of her WGIA American flag next to the two men that were previously standing there. She then begins the first verse, “I’m a pretty motherfucker, hundred dollar on the trucker/Bet you keepin’ ugly bitches on your dick, undercover/He had the sickest bitch, fucked it up, what a sucker.” In a certain sense, this evokes the spoken-word portion (all of which were written by Warsan Shire) from Beyoncé’s Lemonade visual album when she says, from the mocking perspective of her erstwhile “beloved,” “Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head… Rest in peace my true love, who I took for granted, most bomb pussy, who because of me sleep evaded.” And yes, Beyoncé, too has been an influence on Slayyyter, who also cited 2006’s B’Day as being among her “holy trinity” of formative pop albums (along with Britney Spears’ Blackout and, what else, Lady Gaga’s The Fame).

But it’s the infidelity aspect of Lemonade that creeps into “Crank 2,” with Slayyyter recently revealing on the In Your Dreams podcast, “It was like two days before my album dropped, I found out I got cheated on in my house while I was rehearsing for Coachella in L.A.” So it is that she also said she was listening to Lemonade every day to cope (though Lily Allen’s West End Girl would be a good pick too, particularly with a lyric like, “I’m not convinced that he didn’t fuck you in our house” from “Madeline”). And now, it would seem, she wrote “Crank 2” to cope as well, goading, “I’m makin’ money now/You runnin’ out of cash.”

There’s another lyric that also channels Del Rey on 2012’s “Radio” as she flexes, “Baby, love me ‘cause I’m playin’ on the radio (how do you like me now?).” Slayyyter’s interpretation of that is, “You see me blowin’ up/I’m on your television” as she taunts the ex (namely, Charlie Shuffler). Her braggadocio on “Crank 2” as it relates to her clout only increasing since the time she was cheated on is, in its way, a kind of manifestation of Del Rey also declaring on “Radio,” “American dreams came true somehow/I swore I’d chase ‘em till I was dead.” Though, in Slayyyter’s case, she was actually ready to give up if WGIA flopped. Luckily, “God” or whoever intervened to make it a success.

And, talking of God, at one point on WGIA’s “Yes Goddd,” Slayyyter insists, “I love America, I love America!” And perhaps part of that love is proudly showcasing all the things about America that are decidedly, well, trashy (more Lana-codedness). A WGIA “trend” that endures in “Crank 2,” though, in truth, the visuals for “Crank” have more “trash” cachet. What “Crank 2” does have in its favor, however, is being more cinematic. Not just because it’s shot in black and white (save for that eerie scene of a man painting [in blood red] stick-like bunny ears on the wall above his head and then also indiscriminately painting his face), but because there is generally a greater sense of drama to scenes like Slayyyter in formation with eight other dancers or riding around in the back of a car/sticking her head out of its sunroof while doing donuts in a barren landscape (again, Lana type imagery) or wearing a fringe jacket as she hugs herself for comfort (once more, Lana-esque).

There’s also the brief moment when Slayyyter, who once announced, “I Love Hollywood!” features the WOR$T MAN IN AMERICA title in giant “Hollywood sign lettering” in the middle of the desert before standing in front of it like her version of the American flag. But the most cinematic instance of all is the tornado that one can see slowly then rapidly brewing in the background, almost as if summoned by Slayyyter and her lookalikes. Which is perhaps part of why they’re all so unfazed by it. And yes, apart from a cornstalk, is there any symbol of the Midwest more well-known than the tornado? As for Slayyyter, that’s how she’s blown through the year of 2026: chaotically and unstoppably.

While “Crank 2” is actually sonically and tonally quite similar to “Crank” (perhaps because Slayyyter knows the latter is impossible to top)—whereas “brand new chanel$” is entirely different from “beat up chanel$—it is still very much its own thing. Even apart from Gaga and Del Rey offerings of the 2010s. Yes (goddd), “Crank 2” is its own “animal.” In this case, a bunny scarecrow.