Via Holly Anderson of Grantland, please enjoy washing your eyes out with bleach trying to stab yourself in the eardrums with a screwdriver this OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED VIDEO FROM USC. Check out the production values. Check out the editing. THEY PUT TIME AND EFFORT INTO THIS.
USC made the worst hype song and video ever
This is a school where people go to get ONE OF THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS FILM DEGREES IN THE COUNTRY. THIS IS WHAT THEY PUT TOGETHER.
Bill Hanstock is a writer, author and Emmy Award-winning producer. He began writing for SB Nation in 2011.
Here are some things about this video:
1. A capella is fine. There’s nothing wrong with a capella. A capella and rap at the same time, however, need a light and ironic touch. It doesn’t need a guy with a flat-brimmed cap askew and sunglasses and a LEATHER JACKET OVER A TROJANS JERSEY jumping around with his buddies earnestly, like that one Onyx video they saw that one time.
2. That chorus/bridge/whatever where lead a capella guy croons like he’s in a Color Me Badd gang and the way to get jumped into the gang is you have to roll nine deep and make sex-face to the camera.
3. Too many people making sex-face to the camera for a song that is about I HOPE OUR FOOTBALL TEAM DEFEATS THE OTHER GUYS.
4. The lyrics are really bad but also unintelligible at key moments. Like at around 1:15 in the video. “Let me break it down how it was told to me/ How every Trojan man and woman learns to live successfully”? Is that what he’s saying there? There’s a difference between hip-hop bombast and whatever the hell you are doing right now, guy whose bangs are visible while you’re wearing a baseball cap.
5. What are those people on the concourse walking the other way thinking when this is going on? THAT is the video I want to see.
6. If you make it to the part with the background dancers, congratulations. You win. The thing you win is that you are now screaming.
See More:
