Despite the obvious dearth of dinosaurs, scarcity of superheroes, and paucity of planet-shaking threats, Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope has somehow become one of the buzziest movies of the summer. That’s probably half counter-programming–we don’t get to see too many stories about self-described geeky black kids who play punk rock music–and half the fact that the handful of big names that are involved–namely Pharrell and A$AP Rocky–are superstars in their fields. And all of those things come together in the music video for “Don’t Get Deleted,” the first single from Dope‘s Pharrell-curated soundtrack.
The video opens with the characters from the movie setting up a GoPro-enabled drone as they disappointedly prepare to film their band, Awreeoh, playing a show to an empty park. After some tech wizardry from a friend of the group deletes the social media accounts of all of the people in the area and replaces them with a message reading “Go To The Park,” though, the band hops to life. The song itself is endlessly catchy, which makes sense–it was written and produced by Pharrell himself, who knows a thing or two about writing catchy songs–and it works as both a music video and a promo for the movie, which is a nice spot to occupy. As fictional bands go, we’re ready for Awreeoh to take their place alongside The Wonders, Morris Day & The Time, and Sex Bob-omb as fake bands we’ll spend a fair amount of real time listening to.
