Adding onto the controversy of their first single-turned-iTunes only track “Birthday Girl,” The Roots have finally released a formal video for the song that should turn even more heads.
While the video has no appearances by either The Roots or Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump, who has a cameo on the song, the video does have a different guest star: porn actress Sasha Grey.
Winning this year’s award for AVN Female Performer of the Year, the 20-year-old Grey is also widely known for her appearance on the Tyra Banks Show. The topic of the show was young porn stars and prostitutes.
In the Rik Cordero-directed video, Grey is having a party for her 18th birthday, and several older men bring her gifts. At the end of the video, in a scene that mirrors that of MSNBC Dateline’s popular show To Catch A Predator, a man comes out with a camera crew to embarrass (and, presumably, turn in for arrest) the men for illegally courting the underage girl. Band member ?uestlove has described the song as “The most beautiful statutory rape song ever,” as the song’s lyrics describe the awkward relationship between artists and underage female fans.
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“For me, it sends an interesting message,” Grey said in an unspecified report that she reposted on her MySpace blog. “Our society is obsessed with using sex to market videos, films, music, campaigns, etc., etc., but yet porn is considered taboo and immoral. … The entire video is filled with sexual innuendos, which is quite normal. It will be exciting to see how many viewers get angry that a porn star is playing the role of a young woman who is embracing her sexuality in a naughty way.“
The song “Birthday Girl” has gotten seesawing press ever since it hit the net. It initially leaked through a seemingly homemade YouTube video, and another unofficial video surfaced shortly thereafter. While various bloggers have called out the video as a discreet viral campaign, ?uestlove has consistently denied the group’s involvement on the message board on his OkayPlayer web site.
After the song got negative feedback from fans and bloggers (most notably XXL’s Andrew Noz in a column entitled, “You Sold Out Homie”), The Roots opted to take the song off of their album Rising Down, pegging it as the “international single” and an iTunes exclusive. [click here] Other leaked songs and videos from the disc—“75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction),” “Get Busy” (feat. Dice Raw and Peedi Crakk), “Rising Up” (feat. Wale and Chrisette Michele), and “Rising Down (Hum Drum)” (feat. Mos Def, Styles P and Dice Raw)—have fared much better. The album is set to hit stores Tuesday, April 29.
