Far East Movement - “Like a G6”

  And once again, I have no idea who this group might be. But they must have done something right because they’ve got a Top 10 hit and some buzz on the Internet. Let’s see what it’s all about, shall we?

  We start off with some girl waltzing into a minimalist restaurant of some kind. We know it’s minimalist because they have simple, abstract art on the walls and disco is not playing. She holds up her iPad to check her “To Do” list, and it has four pointless things listed. I’m already not really satisfied with this video. You need an iPad to make a list? You can’t write on the back of a bill envelope like any normal person?

  A subtitle informs us that it’s 8:00pm in Los Angeles. Oh, well that totally changes everything, and now I completely understand. (Not.) We watch as our heroine navigates the intricate hallways of the restaurant, her boobs so tightly winched into her dress that it’s got to be some type of major structural accomplishment. (We don’t know this woman’s name, so we’ll call her Nadine.)

  Nadine stomps into a private dining room, where there’s a happy ethnic mix of various people shoving food in their faces and, more importantly, knocking back what looks like sake. Some girl on the right proffers a shot of sake to Nadine, and she sucks it down like she’s trying to get a poppy seed out of her teeth. Then she marches away, with the courteous girl on the right following her out of the room. Nothing like getting free alcohol and a hot date within 20 seconds of entering a restaurant.

  We cut to more happy people wearing sunglasses at night and singing into the camera. For some reason, the director of this video found it necessary to create an image of Cheerios on the lenses of the glasses. I really don’t understand, and it’s very distracting. Then we see Nadine and her new partner (we’ll call her Bolivia) standing outside the restaurant, which is apparently Korean. Still with the not understanding.

  More shots of the Sunglass People gettin’ down wit the music and bopping about. Is this the Far East Movement? Wow. There sure are a lot of them. This is totally not going to work if they make it big and start making some serious money. They’re gonna have to trim things down, just like The Dreamgirls. Nadine and Bolivia jump into a really nice car that we know they can’t afford, so somebody’s sleeping with somebody else.

  Then we focus on just one of the bouncing Sunglass People, a guy who apparently has been given a solo in the song and likes to purse his lips, make street hand gestures, and mistakenly believes that the “ladies” can’t wait to jump into his bed. I don’t know where he went to school, but he took the wrong classes, because something is just not working out with that whole look.

  Nadine and Bolivia are now at a liquor store, wandering around the aisles in slight confusion. (We’ve all been in that predicament, where the sheer number of alcoholic options is overwhelming, especially if you’ve already had a nip or two on the car-ride over.) To help the girls make their selections, we are treated to several members of the Far East Movement rapping and shoving their faces at the camera. Here’s a tip, folks. If you want me to like your song, don’t shove your faces at the camera like you don't have any sense. Don't really care for that mess.

  While Nadine and Bolivia traipse about the store, laughing a lot and fondling bottles, we get to see some female member of the posse doing her own rap. She actually seems to have a decent voice, so I guess she’s the Diana Ross of the group, and will soon quit the band to start a solo career, leaving the rest of the band to eventually appear on the Biography channel in a documentary about drug abuse and bitterness.

  This girl (we’ll call her Copacabana) sings for a while, as we watch Nadine and Bolivia haul their purchases to the fancy car and start driving around the town. (Other members of the Far East Movement perform hand gestures and pretend to know how to dance, but I don’t care and I’m over them.) Even the director of the video knows he or she is dealing with some questionable talent, so they start blurring the video like it’s artsy instead of just boring.

  Nadine and Bolivia arrive at some building (with Nadine still waving around that stupid and pointless iPad), where you can only gain access by putting your hand on a scanner that reads your palm print. This is unsettling. Why would you want to go into a building like that? I wouldn’t. If you want to scan my skin topography, I’ll just go down to the corner bar where people don’t make you do this type of thing. Have these people not seen “Gattaca”?

  More shots of the male members of Far East Movement being obnoxious. More faces in the camera and irritating hand gestures. Seriously, that is SO annoying.

  The high-security door leads to a radio station (“CherryTree Radio”, subtly implying that these girls are somehow virgins, which is clearly not the case). I don’t know what’s happened to Nadine, because I don’t see her, but Bolivia is leading another girl with a skanky black halter-top into the studio. (It might be Nadine, but when did she have time to change clothes?)

  Some production assistant comes out to meet Bolivia and Whoever, and I immediately don’t trust this person because she has creepy blue highlights in her hair and has far too many colors involved in her eye-shadow. Then Nadine suddenly reappears, still wearing the too-tight red outfit from the beginning of the video, so I really don’t know who The Lady in Black might be.

  This doesn’t seem to be important, because we cut back to the massive Far East Movement, and the one girl who can actually sing has knocked everybody away and is rapping again. (Sadly, this doesn’t stop the male members of Far East from trying to jump in front of the cameras and commit to videotape the fact that they have no rhythm whatsoever.)

  Now we cut to some party somewhere else, where everybody seems really happy that Nadine, Bolivia and Mysterious Black Girl have arrived to work their groove thang. Oh wait, this appears to be the place where the entire, massive roster of the Far East Movement have been partying and wearing sunglasses, unaware that this video is not as hip and cool as they think it is.

  And THIS will really surprise you: the Far East Movement taunts everybody to “put yo hands up”, and everybody does, with the camera capturing this activity from various angles. Perhaps, in my lifetime, there will be a moratorium on drunken people in a bar putting their hands up. It’s just not very inspiring. Can we move on?

  But for now, much to my chagrin, all of these people are putting their hands up. This goes on forever. And yet record executives and music producers are totally stunned that CD sales are down. Hello? Who the hell approved this video? Or this song? Let’s start there.

  And finally we have the one decent vocalist back on the audio track, trying to salvage things, but the train has already wrecked. The director tries to save his career with some fancy editing, but at the end of the day, it’s just not very pretty.

  Speaking of day, it’s suddenly the next morning, and we have some slo-mo shots of the Far East Movement at an airport, marching toward a plane. Are they really going to unleash these people on the rest of the world?

  And more importantly…

  What the hell is a G6?


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.