There is no girl who is never not in a “rich girl mood.” That being said, entitlement is a helluva drug, and maybe even more affecting when it’s given to a girl who doesn’t actually have the cash to back it up. Perhaps seeing an opportunity to capitalize on this collective sentiment of deserving the best while not having the luxury of, say, hiring private firefighters, Kehlani and recent “social media star” turned singer Dounia came together to collaborate on an anthem that speaks to every female’s latent desire to be cut open and “bleed chardonnay.”
Referencing her experience in the world of being paid to be herself in the same way Dounia is, Kehlani raps, “I’m on a quality wave, every pic on my page keepin’ me paid.” Even so, that doesn’t mean she’s quite where she wants to be financially as the lines between fantasy and reality blur at the outset of the accompanying music video, co-created by our “wannabe” rich girls that decide to take matters into their own hands when it comes to getting the finances they need to enjoy a proper night out.
As Kehlani laments at the beginning of their simple yet effective heist (gaining an in based on the line, “Who doesn’t check the bathroom at their job before they close the store?”), “Girl, I’m tellin’ you I’ve been ready for forty-five minutes. I’m hungry…” She’s eager to get their boutique heist over with so they can party as they ought to (complete with the Dounia-desired “body positive” twerking dancers that envelop them). Thus, we see the getaway aftermath on the “Rich Girl Camera,” all acrylics rubbing up agains Benjamins that were not earned but wanted, therefore taken. In many ways, the video is a commentary on the innate ability of the girl who is attractive enough to push her way into the world of wealth by faking it (Anna Delvey, of course, being the most recent example). Because no one is going to say no to a pretty face with expertise in how to have fun.
At the same time, there is a clear distinction between the true “rich bitch” and the plumpened layabout who falls into cash through the art of the con. And it is one that Die Antwoord’s Yolandi Visser would be all too ready to point out based on her golden ensembles and free-flowing bubble baths in the video for “Rich Bitch” from 2010’s $O$. Yet, unlike Dounia and Kehlani, Yolandi’s sense of “Material Girl” irony is much sharper, showing scenes of herself watching a black and white movie (Norma Desmond style) of the former poor version of who she was before she set fire to her pauper’s abode to somehow miraculously ascend the ranks of the class system by becoming a singer (or some other profession that allows for deluxe toilet paper with graphic prints). While she may delight in her plush bed and ostensibly Nutella-equipped bread served to her at a table like the one at the Beast’s castle, Yolandi still has the sense to remind us, “Fuck the upper class.” It is not an acuteness that Dounia or Kehlani possesses, content to relish their “rich girl view” from cloud nine without thinking too heavily about the politics behind it. As Dounia, who channels a combination of Charli XCX and Lorde with her look, puts it, “You think these politics matter, well shordey clearly they don’t.” Tragically, this is even more salient coming from a girl who built her music career on an Instagram account. Because no, it is not about how a rich girl gets rich (and will never seem to die trying), but what she films and takes pictures of herself doing with that richness.
As the security guard narrates at the beginning of the video, “Yeah, there’s two girls that broke in. I mean I don’t know how…the security cameras have, like, this lip gloss on them. My daughters say they look kind of like these two singers Dounia and Kehlani,” the Anna Delvey parallel is again fresh in one’s mind as we can’t help but think that as long as you appear to be someone important (whether you are or not), you can get away with just about anything. Especially if it makes you look like a “badder bitch” than the garden variety “bad bitch” (incidentally, Dounia’s new album is called The Avant-Garden). But what’s so impressive about, as Kehlani (perhaps having spent too much time with Cardi during the making of “Ring“) repeats, “Getting bags, getting bags, getting bags, getting bags, getting bags, getting bags, getting bags,” as though something worthwhile was actually done to get them?
Like a less camp version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (the song and most especially the video), Kehlani and Dounia lounge around in spaces wherein the shots are filmed so tightly that it would be impossible to gauge the level of affluence (or lack thereof) present were it not for their semi-couture and obligatory flashing of money. Alas, Yolandi never needed to play that game, knowing full well that true rich bitches don’t need to flash their cash. Because “rich girl” is not a mood, but a constant way of being when you truly are it.
