You know on shows like the X Factor, sometimes at an audition a judge will say “You look like a pop star”? Well, D2S don’t look like popstars. They look like some lads from a rugby club who have got together and made a music video to raise money for their club’s upcoming tour of Canberra.
But as it happens D2S (which is short for Destined 2 Shyne, which is long for for Destined to Shine) were a real pop group and “Ride with Me” was their Neptunes-inspired single. It had a lot of airplay on Mai FM and reached 14 in the pop charts.
It’s a pretty generic piece of early 2000s R&B pop. The lyrics are like a grab bag of genre cliches, a world of ballers, players and shorties. And then there’s the bit where “trust me” is rhymed with “oooh weee”.
The video is set in the showroom of a car dealer on Great North Road. It seems like they’ve chosen that setting for a bling take on the “ride with me” theme, but given that no one touches the cars – they only dance around them – it literally seems like a band who’s been allowed into a car dealer to shoot their music video with the proviso that no one’s allowed to touch the cars.
There’s one bit of the video that is a little disturbing. One of the guys sings “you know I want to be in you, girl” and he has a really aggressive look on his face. It’s scary, not sexy. This is why R&B videos typically have girls in them – to stop things feeling like a bunch of guys who have been in prison too long. (Check out Ja Rule and Bobby Brown’s magnificent “Thug Lovin'” for bling and girls and music done extravagantly well.)
That’s the problem. D2S had a decent song and just wanted to make a cool music video, like the sort of R&B videos they saw on TV. Curiously enough, a couple of years later Dei Hamo came out with the similarly themed “We Gon Ride”, that actually managed a properly blinged-out music video. But it’s hard to make a $5000 video grant look that fancy, even more so when you surround the group with $50,000 cars.
Best bit: the walk along the Great North Road, glistening in the rain.
Next… everyday is noisy and bright.
If that’s the showroom I think it is, the other problem they have is that they turn the camera the other day they’ll come smack full shot into the Maccas on Great North Road! 🙂 Always did wonder at the bizarre juxtaposition (usually as I headed over to get a burger late in the evening from my work on the end of Ponsonby Road).
Yes, that’s the one! It would have been a much more interesting video if they’d been hanging out at McD’s.