Musicians have been dealing with this whole quarantine situation in many different ways. Understandably, artists don’t want to fall behind or lose any of the traction that they’ve worked so hard to gain in the industry, so they’re doing everything they can to keep up in these difficult times and continuously release new content to appease fans every chance they get. One of these strategies, at least when it comes to music videos, is to drop animated visuals which we’ve obviously seen more recently than ever before. Although this is a smart way to remain socially distanced while also offering some intriguing content, I think that this shouldn’t be forgotten once quarantine ends and we go back to living normal lives. I just think that some of these cartoon music videos are even more interesting than some of the other videos we would normally get from certain artists who just smoke weed, drink liquor, and hang out in front of a Rolls Royce or something along those same lines. With animations, plots and different worlds can be created, and the artists can get away with doing a lot more and staying creative rather than just repeatedly doing the same things over and over, just in different settings.
As for Shoreline Mafia, who typically try a lot harder to release entertaining and unique visuals than the ones I was previously talking about, they’re back with a brand new animated visual for last month’s song “Gangstas & Sippas”. Considering I just wrote about the song itself not too long ago and you’ll hear it while watching the video, I’m not going to go into detail about that, but just know it’s as vibey and West Coast as ever before. The music video opens up highlighting the Shoreline members hanging out at a strip club. The animation style is different than some of the others we’ve seen recently, and the characters are a bit more pronounced and as real-life looking as a 2-D animation can be, at least in my opinion.
After this introductory scene, the setting changes to a control room within a Hydrocodeine lab. There are a plethora of screens showing off different security camera footage with one of these cameras capturing Shoreline breaking into the facility, and we all know what they’re after. As they bust in, the scientists take note of their presence and begin to run away from the guns they’re now pointing in their direction. They secure bags full of cough syrup and head out, leading us to the next scene where OhGeesy opens the trunk to his Bentley in order to show off the overflow of bottles he helped steal. From there, they go back to the strip club just as the lyrics that Fenix spits suggest. As Q Da Fool comes in for his verse, his cartoon doppelganger is lounging in what looks like a pool full of lean before he proceeds to reenact pretty much every single line he spits in the song. Finally, they all head back to the strip club one last time before the scene fades to black and the song comes to an end.
One of the things I noticed during this music video was the fact that a lot of the strip club footage was just recycled and I’m not sure if this was done intentionally to portray how that’s just their weekly routine or if it was to conserve time and energy. Either way, the animations really aren’t anything that is going to win awards or anything in all honesty, but they gave an interesting take on the California crew’s lifestyle. As I said before, if they wanted to create the same concept in real life and not in a cartoon version, it would have taken so much more time and money to pull off an entire Lean heist as they did in this visual. This just backs up my point about being able to do so many more things in an animated world than you could in a real-world music video, which is pretty obvious, but I think it gets forgotten at times. Once again, I hope that animated music videos aren’t totally forgotten about when the world returns to normal because they really have piqued my interest in the past few months, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Be sure to give the brand-new “Gangstas & Sippas” music video a watch as soon as you find some time.