Charli XCX’s fascination with mixtapes, that hip-hop staple, steers her toward actual rapping on her messy but intriguing Super Ultra mixtape. The rapping is the worst part of new Super Ultra video subject “Cloud Aura,” in the form of Internet via Los Angeles scenester Brooke Candy’s bratty, nakedly trolling verse. Overall, though, Charli’s swirling electro-pop is alluringly off-kilter here, with a lovelorn hook that lodges itself in the brain cells you just wasted hearing Candy spit, “You were my Chris Brown / I was your only girl.” Which reminds us once again that “Nobody’s Business” is, infuriatingly, one of the best songs on Unapologetic.
The just-posted “Cloud Aura” video (via PopJustice) is a similarly postmodern affair, a pastiche of borrowed tears that will test your pop-cultural IQ and, at times, your patience. Candy returns in boob-grabbing stripper style, such as it is, and where she appeared wearing a Britney Spears-style snake in Grimes’ oddball “Genesis” video, here she’s joined by a brief glimpse of Britney herself — along with many other famous and semi-famous human beings, including Ingrid Bergman, Demi Lovato, The Hills‘ Lauren Conrad, Alison Brie, Isla Fisher, Zooey Deschanel, and … Honey Boo Boo. As strange and flawed as this video and song are, their brazen entertainment value makes them well worth experiencing, just so long as you know what you’re in for. You’ve seen Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, haven’t you?
