Known for his quick rhymes and wide grin, Jonathan Lyndale Kirk better known as DaBaby, returned to the limelight in April with his new album “BLAME IT ON BABY” with the highest-charting tracks in recent times, some of which took over Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks. In September 2020, he continued the streak by releasing the new video for “Pick Up” featuring Quavo of Migos. “Pick Up” is the seventh video to drop from his new album following “Peephole,” “No Dribble,” “Rockstar,” “Can’t Stop,” “Jump” and “Find My Way.” “BLAME IT ON BABY” features prominent artists including Future, Megan Thee Stallion, and Roddy Ricch. Born in 1991 from Charlotte, North Carolina, Jonathan Lyndale Kirk reached a mainstream audience in 2019. Before that, he released several mixtapes between 2014 and 2018.
The “Pick Up” music video features animated sequences interspersed with stunning visual effects. The video is directed by Reel Goats and follows DaBaby and Quavo as they struggle with phone addiction. The video keeps the viewers interested right from the beginning when DaBaby gets sucked into an LG dual screen smartphone and travels through a time-space portal.
The portal takes him into a room of rotary phones where he joins Quavo. The duo then travels through time to the Stone Age and meets cavemen and dinosaurs, all while struggling to get their girl to pick up their phone. We see DaBaby in a spacesuit falling from outer space and crashing onto Quavo’s van who’s dressed up as a pest exterminator. Quavo is seen exterminating the rats, full of zeal and in an explosive manner. The video manifests the creative ideation of the scenes by the director Reel Goats and the producer Gemini, Spicy Rico.
“PICK UP” is rhythmic, bouncy, and slower, which isn’t DaBaby’s trait, but his lag is making it catchier. Besides him, it came naturally to Quavo, and he is more in control with his lyrical delivery. I mean, it can’t get better. Like his dope rat extermination skills, he is killing it on a lyrically insane level. Quavo quite syncs the beat, and the delivery of the lyrics is fluent and natural. You can’t deny the coolness of “PICK UP”. It deserves applause from all the hip-hop fans as it’s dropped in these crucial times when a lot of sweat makes a music video happen.
The instrumental music of “Pick Up” is similar to much of DaBaby’s discography, consisting of three repeating flute notes and a bass-line. The song gives kind of an ambient vibe with slower beats. DaBaby raps a little slower than he usually raps but Quavo comes more naturally on the beat.
The video also complements the references DaBaby and Quavo gave in the lyrics, including a homage to Deebo and Big Worm from the classic movie, Friday, when DaBaby raps, “If Deebo choked me out, bitch/ I would’ve killed him, bitch.” In the rotary telephone room scene, Quavo is seen endorsing the importance of rocking the vote by wearing a “Lil Wayne for President” t-shirt. The songwriters, James Rico and Gabrielle Rico have done a wonderful job picturing the scenes greatly through words.
The cover of the album is historical and kind of everlasting, as it has recognized the pandemic. This means this art piece will be remembered in the future, shared as entertainment amid challenging times. It will remain intact to hip-hop lovers’ memories when they are looking back at it in hopefully a safe future.
The colorful and vibrant music video engulfed with a stunning and brilliant blend of effects and visual effects of “Pick Up” is produced by Scissor Films and has impressive visuals effects (VFX) that seamlessly integrate with the video shots. Most of the scenes in the video have been shot on a green screen and are brilliantly edited by the creative visual effects team of Scissor Films. Scissor films once again brilliantly executed the ideas and with their ever-impressive sorcery of visual effects and best handling of new cutting edge FX techniques, which is an uplifting perspective of the music video. Their post-production specialty in high-end VFX, color correction with the vibrant final product, gave birth to some quality artistic video for this track. Their collaboration with the rapper has surely brought justice to the music video. Get a detailed insight into the VFX breakdown here.
This reaffirms that DaBaby and Quavo are the hip-hop stars with the charisma to attract their audience for the long future. Their confident voices with fluency in dropping words in style aren’t lesser than the giants among men. Their prior work after DaBaby’s whole album “Blame it on Baby” is evidence of their success and the track “Pick Up” is picked up instantaneously by his audience, and his fans should show some love in the COVID-19 times to their stars.
Check out the complete team behind the masterpiece below.
Artist: Da Baby, QuavoHuncho
Songwriter(s): Rico, Gabrielle Rico
Directed by: Reel Goats
Assistant Director: Gabrielle Rico
VFX: Scissor Films
VFX Producer: Joe Grayem
Executive Producer: DaBaby
Produced by: Gemini, Spicy Rico
DP: Logan Meis
Steadicam: Aser Santons Jr.
AC: Philip Hoang
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