Navigating the hood is like second-nature to rapper and Long Beach native Vince Staples, and he takes us on a hilarious personal tour with the help of Google Street View in “FUN!”

It’s no secret that Vince Staples was deep in gang life, so he’s something of a connoisseur when it comes to the streets. It’s also no secret that he’s brashly outspoken in his informed opinion about important topics… like the delightful time at Coachella when he went on a minute-long rant about R. Kelly being a child molester. And when the two come together, the result is a video like “FUN!” that’s insightful social commentary masquerading as party rap.

“FUN!” opens on a Google Earth screen that plunges us deep into “Norfy,” Vince’s nickname for his hood Northside Long Beach. From there, Vince cameos in all sorts of hood shenanigans captured from the perspective of a Google Street View camera, complete with screen glitches, middle finger photo bombs, and even a map view inset. But the mood comes to a screeching halt by the end when you realize it’s all been a ironic critique of the white consumption of impoverished Blackness.

Last February, I went to a Vince Staples show, and he cheekily insisted that his primarily white audience members find a black person in the crowd to wish them a Happy Black History Month. As a resident of Long Beach, he’s almost certainly been a first-hand witness to the rise of the Hip-Hop/Hood Tourism industry that profits on selling hood culture to outsiders, who for a nominal fee visit all the places their favorite rapper talked about and take pictures of the people, knowing at the end of their three hours they’ll be whisked out of “the bad part of town.” Not to mention the gentrification that he also touches on in “FUN!.” Vince isn’t just acutely aware of the changing landscape of Blackness in America, he’s got a first row seat.

As do we all in his super-chill banger. Though the verses recount all the perils of life in Northside Long Beach, the chorus is an escape from all those hardships to a well-earned good time. Vince makes sure that if you’re gonna be here for the Black entertainment, you’ll have gotten through the Black struggle first. And as he demonstrates in “FUN!,” even if things sometimes get a little ugly along the way, the afterparty’s always lit.

𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“My Black is beautiful
but I’ll still shoot at you, dog”

𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 | 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬