Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 03/28/2011 at 12:16 PM Videos

The Popdust Files: lil wayne, Porcelain Black, Young Money

The Young Money Entertainment net continues to expand its reach, now branching into glammed-up pop/rock with the addition of 25-year-old singer Porcelain Black. The video for her debut single, “This is What Rock and Roll Looks Like,” sees the half-blonde / half-raven-haired vamp stomping around her high school, in a classic “You picked on me once but now you will pay, for now I am fabulous and dance aggressively on cafeteria tables” revenge tale. Naturally, YM head honcho Lil’ Wayne comes along for the ride as well, giving his new artist the official Weezy seal of approval.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mks_qmZV9Is

“My music is like if Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson fu**ed and had a kid, it would be me,” Black has claimed of her style. Surprisingly, she’s not all that far off—the song’s RedOne-produced stomp could fit on the new Britney album, save for the edge provided by the industrial-like guitars and the throaty, gritty texture of Black’s voice, which does sound like she could pull off a hell of a “Tourniquet” cover. The final product comes off as a somewhat rawer version of Pink—Black even warns at one point that she and her friends are “gonna start a fight“—though as with the Missundaztood one, the production is sleek enough that you wouldn’t exactly be shocked to hear it on Top 40.

The video serves mostly to introduce Black, in all her stylistically mish-mashed glory, to the world, as she parades around in weird outfits and tries her hardest to freak out the squares and inspire a couple emergency PTA meetings. It’s cute but not as shocking as it probably thinks it is—when even John Mayer has sung about ripping it up at his old high school, it’s hard to get too much of a thrill from a couple messed-up library table. It does do us the notable favor, however, of starting off with a flashback of a young Porcelain getting made fun of by mean girls dressed in all pink (who in their monochromatic uniforms actually look a lot weirder than Porcelain), until a super-little Lil Wayne, with dreads and sunglasses covering about half his body, comes to her rescue. If this doesn’t prove once and for all that kiddie representations of rappers in music videos are always awesome and adorable and hilarious, I don’t know what will.