The Thotiana Truce

I remember this South Park episode where Jimmy and Timmy discover the Crips and want to join, but the Bloods show up and start executing half the gang, and then someone tries to broker peace in a gymnasium. Watching Blueface’s Thotiana Remix video, I thought about that episode because he somehow pulled off what the cartoon kids couldn’t—got actual Bloods and Crips in the same shot.

Blueface is twenty-two, a former quarterback from LA, and basically the most hyped rapper at the moment. He had this strip club track called Thotiana last year that somehow went global. Drake cosigned it, Ice Cube cosigned it, it hit fifty million Spotify streams, Nicki Minaj did an unofficial remix. Now he’s doing a video that feels like something beyond a typical flex.

Cardi B raps on the remix—fresh off two Grammys. YG’s in it too, and he’s actually a Blood, like actually in the gang. Blueface shows up in red. Cole Bennett directed it, the Lyrical Lemonade guy who’s practically shot every major rap video in the last few years, and he made a video where the red and blue don’t mean violence. They just mean everyone’s in the same room.

I don’t know. It’s a music video. It won’t fix anything. But Cole Bennett got rival gang members on set together, and they showed up, and that matters. It’s one of those small, stupid, beautiful things that reminds me why I even care about any of this.