POPSCREEN: Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain

Ever wondered what happens after the Oscars end, the paparazzi leave, and the stars disperse into the night? As Jamie Foxx’s video for “Blame It” finally reveals to us ugly people, they all show up at the same shady club and chill with each other. That’s right: Hollywood is just as incestuous as any Harvard student group. But cooler. Because, mercifully, the alcohol won’t run out at midnight.

Sure, the music video is mostly stereotypical, and a little low-budget in appearance, with all the same images we’ve seen a million times: flashy cars and sunglasses at night, 30 identical and extremely inebriated extras in mini-dresses, and endless bottles of flowing alcohol. All of this is held together by Auto-Tuned vocals proclaiming the virtues of seducing young women by telling them to “blame it on the alcohol.” Classy.

But the sheer number of celebrity cameos makes up for the lack of ingenuity. In rapid succession, Forest Whitaker, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ron Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, T-Pain, Quincy Jones, Cederic the Entertainer, and some less famous people are paraded onscreen almost too quickly for you to figure out what the hell is going on. If you’re counting, between them that makes 3 Academy Awards, 7 Academy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and 94 Grammy nominations, all colluding on this one fateful night on the dance floor. Ultimately, this video is awesome for one simple reason: the number of absurd moments resulting from this

eclectic procession of famous people: Ron Howard is in a club raising his glass to a bunch of drunk people not named Michael, George, or George Michael. T-Pain does some kind of cheesy dance move I am certain he first witnessed on “So You Think You Can Dance?” Samuel L. Jackson is at any given time buttressed by at least three pairs of breasts. Foxx seems to be having the least fun, as he can’t seem to get his girl to loosen up.

Also good are the rare scenes that suggest Jamie Foxx may be shrewdly making fun of the cheesiness of his own video. During the requisite money raining scene, Foxx actually puts the bills into his pocket as if to say, “Gee, this economy isn’t conducive to the gangsta lifestyle anymore.” And he has to be making fun of the rap genre in those scenes where he is dancing with a set of back-up dancers wearing matching hideous sequined tracksuits. It’s alright though if he doesn’t care for rap culture all that much. He seems to have more fun hanging out with movie stars anyway.

—Crystal Huang