People Are Asking The Wrong Question About This Blac Chyna Video

If you follow Blac Chyna on Instagram, you may have noticed that she recently appeared in a new music video for rapper Belly. She uploaded a clip of the video Wednesday night. The song is called “P.O.P.” and is an acronym for power of pussy. According to People, some followers think that Chyna is taking shots at Rob Kardashian with this move. She appears prominently when Belly raps, “You were seduced by her sin/Don’t let Lucifer in/She took you for everything/You let her do it again.” She smirks as she looks seductively into the camera.

I highly doubt that in the midst of her breakup, Blac Chyna wrote a song about getting over on Rob, gave it to a rapper to record, and then appeared in the video to rub it in. (Refinery29 has reached out to Chyna and Belly for comment.) I think it’s way more likely that Belly has been following Rob and Chyna’s never-ending relationship drama just like the rest of us; and after he conceived a song about women using their sexuality to get what they want, he thought it would be clever to include Blac Chyna in the music video. And, for the record, it was.

However, this is where my personal side-eye was activated. Why did Blac Chyna agree to be in this video in the first place? Chyna made the cross over from stripper and urban print model to media fixture after she appeared as Nicki Minaj's body double in the music video for Kanye West's "Monster" in 2010. A year later, she was the leading lady in then-boyfriend Tyga's "Rack City" video. Nevertheless, all of these appearances preceded her being a household name. Chyna's career focused on her beauty and fashion endeavours after that; a move that has been working out for her. She made an exception for Future in 2015 when she played his love interest in the music video for "Rich $ex" in 2015, sparking dating rumours between the two.

But Belly is no Kanye or Future. I may just be old and out of touch, but the only Belly I acknowledge is my own and the 1998 cult classic directed by Hype Williams. The 33-year-old Canadian rapper responsible for “P.O.P.” has apparently been making music for over a decade and signed with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in 2015. But he has fewer than 500k followers on Instagram, while Chyna has over 13 million. And even though, to his credit, some of Belly’s posts include casual photos with Jay-Z, he doesn’t come close to matching Chyna’s social-media dominance. In terms of exposure, he needs Chyna way more than she needs him.

While I obviously can’t confirm this, I’d also be willing to go out on a limb to say that Chyna is wealthier than Belly, too. Not only that, the music video game has changed a lot. They barely even air on television anymore, and the video vixen has been replaced by the Instagram model. And even in this arena, Chyna is among the upper echelon. This, in addition to recent reports that suggest Blac Chyna is sitting on a pile of cash much bigger than Rob Kardashian’s, makes her cameo in this video feel like a little bit of a backwards hustle, at least from a branding perspective. In my opinion, video vixen feels like a step down, not up.

I’m going to trust that Blac Chyna didn’t come this far to start making bad business decisions; that she’s self-aware enough to really think through how appearing in a video that is essentially about gold diggers could work for her; and that she was paid handsomely for her time. Or, you never know, she could be ushering in the video vixen renaissance we didn’t know we needed — and putting her own spin on it.