Tay Zonday – Brought the Thunder

This week’s obsession: Tay Zonday’s new Dr. Prepper-branded music video. The power of Zonday’s Nice Guy steamrolls the messy bramble patch of cliche that surround him in this latest experiment to join the world of user-generated content with brands that time forgot.

The opening shot begins with a faithful reconstruction of Tay’s groundbreaking home studio but wastes no time in upending audience expectation by zooming back to reveal a fantastical control room complete with female dancers stationed at glowing green terminal displays. In the first of many ill-fitting attempts to graft hip-hop signifiers onto the real American Idol, Tay smiles at the camera and awkwardly reworks Jay-Z, “Allow me to introduce myself…” We later see Tay in a series of unrelated scenarios – king on a throne, international playboy in silk, b-boy with an icy grill, game show contestant, dapper CEO – yet his smile and charm remind the audience that it’s make-believe, all in good fun. Afterall, he reminds us, he is being “paid a hefty hefty fee.”

Through dozens of snooze-inducing vlogs and a parade of occasionally brilliant songs, Tay has constructed a public identity so powerful that it cannot be overtaken by advertising’s expert lighting and music video’s jump-cut editing. Pepper’s attempt to graft a particular racial and sexual identity on the singer fail completely, especially in light of his obvious Martian heritage. Tay is clearly conscious of this struggle and highlights the tension when he raps, “Brought the Thunder / Made It Rain” referencing both Terror Squad’s soy-beef-master Fat Joe and Wal-Mart’s upstart Pepper competitor, Dr. Thunder.

At the song’s climax, gallons of brown fluid are thrown in slow motion across Tay, a crowd of anonymous dancers, and a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper. I suspect that the video’s producers are now cringing at the implications of lifting this technique from You Can’t Do That On Television as 2 Girls, 1 Cup fever sweeps the internet.

The video ends by zooming out even further to reveal the world as an image on yet another old terminal display as Tay’s baritone-on-sizzurp echoes in a vacant concrete box, “This internet thing is wild…” Although I can’t unpack the significance of outdated technology in this situation, its placement in an empty room seems a final stab at isolating Tay’s influence; to suggest he were playing to an empty room. Of course, a look at the view count says otherwise. Tay Zonday will never die.