2020 has clearly not been everyone’s (or most people’s) year like we all thought at New Years, but for Florida-based rapper $NOT, it is definitely one for the books. On September 24th, the world was given access to the first (hopefully, of many) collaboration between $NOT and Cole Bennett of Lyrical Lemonade.
Sal Tarantino, the executive producer of the video, says “this is a project am extremely proud of. A great effort, working with great team as alway. Snot is truly a gifted young man.”
Within the first 5 seconds, it is easy to see how personal of a song this is for $NOT, and to see his talent that Tarantino touched on. The video opens with him being punched in the jaw by a bully, with $NOT’s back against the yellow lockers of the hallway. Falling onto the floor, the bully walks away, and the song begins. We see $NOT walk through the halls of his high school, repeatedly being looked at, jeered at, and pushed around into the lockers. There is no shortage of yellow, as every classmate in the video wears a yellow hoodie, in classic $NOT style. At the lunch tables, we can see the students passing around yellow Lyrical Lemonade and lemons on yellow platers. We continue to see $NOT express his frustrations at his own thought life and how his “friends” continue to interact with him since he’s come up.
In the latter half of the video, we see $NOT wrestle with a handgun in the bathroom, contemplating whether to empty shells into the classmates who constantly beat up on him. After looking into the mirror, we see $NOT begrudgingly put the handgun away, instead resting it at his side. At this point, 30 seconds still remain in the video so we know there is still more to unpack, although the direction it will go remains unclear.
To find out how the video ends, click here to watch $NOT and Lyrical Lemonade’s music video for Revenge.