Seeing Nicki Minaj FaceTime her guest feature in the new Major Lazer video for “Run Up” raises a few questions in my head. Do you think Onika ever has that moment where she accidentally opens the front-facing camera and startles herself with how rough she looks? How many minutes does she have to deal with a cracked screen before its replaced by an assistant? How many external batteries must someone who gets as many messages as Minaj carry to keep her phone functioning?
None of these questions are answered in “Run Up,” a playful parody of smartphone obsession that follows a party full of folks dancing with themselves for their pocket cameras. And the trop-pop track is no worse for it. PartyNextDoor provides the chorus that should give savvy listeners premonitions of a month from now when they’ll be singing it in the shower. It’s dance-y and endlessly catchy like all Major Lazer songs, and the clever bit in the video where the entire party stops to buffer certainly won’t hurt it’s underlying case to be everywhere this summer.
Presumably, “Run Up” will be on Lazer’s long-awaited album Music Is The Weapon along with “Cold Water.” No info beyond the title has been shared. But given Diplo’s track and chart record, we doubt he’s going to move away from using all kinds of dance music from all over the world, no matter how mad Sean Paul gets.
