Welcome to Will I Get Fired For This?, an occasionally recurring column in which staff writer Charles Holmes whose duties include but are not limited to watching and writing about music videos watches a new music video that he fears will get him fired. Read the previous entry for Metro Boomins 10 Freaky Girls, featuring 21 Savage, here.
Will I Get Fired For This? is a learning experience and Teyana Taylors WTP introduces a new world Im vaguely aware of, but interested in knowing more about ball culture. The self-directed video is set-up as a mockumentary, where different models describe what type of walks they compete in and the different houses they belong too. From what I can gather, balls are similar to rap battles everyone has nicknames and styles except more intense. Les Fabian Brathwaites far more eloquent description defines balls asa way for queer blacks and Latinos to live their best livesThrough elaborate performances incorporating and commenting on race, class and gender, the ball community has historically reflected the American Dream and ones exclusion from it.
Inexplicably, Taylor casts herself as a fictional nobody who picks up dresses thinkRabbit from 8 Milewithout the bars about spaghetti or class politics. I just dont understand why Im not good enough to work my pussy at the ball, she says, while decked in a red Bape hoodie. Then boom, Taylor is dressed in a red wig, lingerie and fur coat acting like the Russell Westbrook of the ball. She twerks and vogues, until Lena Waithe has no choice, but to say she a special motherfucker.Unfortunately, we never check back in with Tokyo McGlare, Milan Christopher, Trace Lysette or Shawn Extravaganza on how they feel that the director of WTP also won the competition.