TALKIN' VIDEOS

*Cue Radio Announcer Voice*
BACK IN THE DAY! NEW YORK CITY! 2002!

For our first “Throwback Thursday,” I’m gonna stay true to form and use a video that isn’t even 3 years old! Just like The Negro Channel and your local hip-hop-flavored radio station do! This week’s lucky contestant? Ja Rule feat. Bobby Brown – “Thug Lovin’.” [watch it now]

Ja Rule & Bobby Brown in the same video? Oh shit! This is too easy!

You know your career is on the downswing when you peruse the entire world of entertainment and all you can come up with is Bobby fuckin’ Brown for the hook of your leadoff single. What happened, nigga? Al B. Sure didn’t answer his mama’s phone that day?

This collaboration and video should never have left the “Irving and Jeffrey post-blunt-joke” stage.

Ironically, the video starts out with two girls on the couch watching and complaining about shitty music video programming. We are then panned over to reveal the saviors of MTV, Ja Rule and Bobby Brown (the kang of R&B). The disaster that ensues only confirms my theory that Ja took a heavy drag of whatever Bobby put in the pipe before the video shoot.

In a scene that Puffy would have shit himself to have even alluded to in 1996, our heroes Jeff and Bobby board a helicopter from the window of their high-rise apartment. (Stop me when this shit DOESN’T sound like a crackhead’s dream.) After having been taken to the rooftop of another high-rise, the song starts and Bobby Brown proceeds to gyrate and air-hump, suggesting the intense drugging that he and Ja did on the way over. From the first note Bob bellows, you can actually hear the crack gurgling in his throat. Because of his acquired crack-lisp (which differs from gay-lisp and slow-kid-lisp), it took me several days to decipher that Bobby was trying to say “—And I know you’re getting bored/ dealin’ with him.”

Somehow, they manage to find their way off of that damned roof and into a Bentley. Driving high on rocks, they meet some Mexican girls in a lo-lo at a stoplight. While we can't hear the exchange between both parties, it probably has something to do with Ja and Bob asking the girls if they knew who was holdin' that work. Needless to say, they abandon the Bentley in the middle of the street and lap up in the girls' car, headed for a street party in the Mexican neighborhood.

The director and editing team was either also high, or rightfully wanted to accentuate the humor of this strange visual collaboration. For the rest of the video the viewer is bombarded by close-ups of Bobby Brown’s frightening twisted-fiend-jaw adlibs. They also provide ample slow motion shots of Bobby’s classic New Edition-era dance steps (riiiiight). Nearly two decades removed from Ronnie, Ricky, Mike and Ralph, Bobby's song and dance routine rivals that of a panhandler on the D train. I damn near threw my pocket change at the TV watching this shit.

Essentially, that’s what Ja did in hiring Whitney Houston’s out-of-work, in-house crackwhore. If he was going to have Bobby not only adorn the video with his heatrock-hijinx, but also serve as the song’s most redeeming and memorable characteristic, he may as well have asked Whitney to be in the crew-shot smoking one of her signature “more-than-weed” blunts. As we all know today, Ja would later add such washed-up actors and B-list celebrities as Eric Roberts, Clarence Williams III and Patrick Swayze to his list of desperate video co-stars.

In retrospect: Can anyone tell me what the fuck has been on The INC’s biscuits the past 4 years? I understood making Ja into a pop princess, but enlisting the aid of Bobby Brown to make a classic record is akin to hiring Jessica Simpson to do your taxes. Considering their current legal problems, they very well may have done that shit too.

You can check out this farce of music video programming here. Also… For some more throwback hate, check out some of this album’s actual owner reviews on Amazon.com. I couldn’t even parody shit like this.

Thanks for walkin’ down memory lane with me, folks! Hasta mañana.

(Disclaimer: Sorry, guys. The site for the video is German. Our sponsor doesn't carry the video, and it was the best neutral party I could find. You can download and keep this one though.)