After letting “Body” run its course as the first “official” single and video from Good News, Megan Thee Stallion is back to remind us why she’s the most “savage” of them all with a new video for the fourth single (counting “Girls in the Hood” and “Don’t Stop,” in addition to “Body”) from the record, “Cry Baby.” Naturally, it also features DaBaby on it (still fresh from his “Levitating” remix with Dua Lipa), because it’s too tailored to his moniker not to. With such a title leaving an opening for Megan Thee Stallion to serve some infantilized sex aesthetics, she opted for a different route than Melanie Martinez did with her “Cry Baby” video from 2016 (granted, Martinez’s toys do come alive at a certain point to start terrorizing her).
No, instead of wielding pregnancies and cribs and block letters that spell out obscenities, The Stallion saw fit to emulate the crux of the narratives from Toy Story and NSYNC’s 2000 video for “It’s Gonna Be Me.” Though one might have thought she would take further inspo from Alice in Wonderland–as she did in the video for “Don’t Stop–by crying as much as Alice to the point that she could ride in a bottle on a sea of her tears, Martinez also kind of already pulled that stunt too recently when her entire room filled with tears by the end of her own “Cry Baby” video. With NSYNC and Toy Story being “old” enough references to pass the material off as fresh, Thee Stallion is primed to make the concept her own with the help of her go-to music video director of late, Colin Tilley.
The story unfolds with a toy shop employee in a mint green wig with upright braids that spell out LV playing with some dolls. He makes them entertain him with their hood rat drama as one accuses, “I look better than you.” Doll Two insists, “No bitch, I look better than you.” Doll One retorts, “Well at least my breath don’t smell like a can of Bounce That Ass.” Doll Two ups the ante with, “Girl, the whole hood know your armpits smell like a pork chop sandwich.” “Pork chop sandwich?!” With that, Doll One can take no more and starts beating her down. The toy store employee laughs at his impromptu play before walking out of the store as though that was the final ceremonial piece to closing up shop for the night.
Needless to say, it doesn’t take long for the “when the cat’s away, the mice will play” philosophy to infect the store–except the mice are toys that come to life. Most of them played by Megan and DaBaby, obvi. With a number of “Megan Barbies” in each room of the dollhouse that serves as the focal point, she immediately conjures overt comparisons to Nicki Minaj before delving right into the Crybaby dance first made popular in the 90s (unsurprisingly, Mariah never got in on the trend for her “Crybaby” video with Snoop Dogg, not wanting to be “wrapped up” with the 90s when her final album of the decade, Rainbow, came out).
Megan also appears in a yellow latex bodysuit with racecar-inspired flourishes for the portions when DaBaby is standing in front of a Hot Wheels-type track. Speaking of, she also finds time to race around in a convertible (sized accordingly) with DaBaby while in a skintight hot pink dress. Her seamless costume shifts offer plenty of 90s throwback flavor, and, after all, Toy Story is a 90s movie. “It’s Gonna Be Me,” too, has that 90s tinge as a result of being released the first year of the new millennium. Directed by Wayne Isham, this premise also takes place in a toy store, except that its focus is not on an employee’s unwitting interactions with the toys, but rather, a customer’s. Why this rather age inappropriate bia is looking for toys at a time way before it was millennial chic to embrace one’s inner child is seemingly irrelevant. The point is, she’s a “hot girl” that the boy band members can vie over every time her back is turned.
Like Megan (and Woody and Buzz), the dudes of NSYNC see fit to fraternize with the opposite toy gender as they make their way to the proverbial Barbie dream house where a party ensues. By the end, they’re being checked out at the register, seemingly by this age inappropriate customer. As they’re scanned, they turn life-size, begging the question of what perverse acts this woman is going to get into when she inevitably takes them back to her abode.
As for Megan, the freaky deaky shit need only remain at the toy store. Alas, the magic of toys coming to life does not extend to them being self-cleaning, and when our playwriting employee returns, it is to find the store in shambles as Megan freezes back in place. One of her toy alter egos then sassily blows a kiss at the camera to show that being a cry baby doesn’t always involve tears (but certainly “wetness” elsewhere, sometimes spurred solely by mischief-making alone).
