There’s often something a little bit unsettling about “she’s gone songs,” something self-pitying and even a little misogynistic of which the song itself seems blissfully unaware. With the music video for “Crooked Smile,” Worcester rapper Danny Fantom digs into the trope with a song that is emotionally compelling and upends its protagonist’s hypocrisies. It’s a wickedly self-aware bit of songwriting, made even more compelling by the crispness of Curtis Kariuki’s direction. (Kariuki recently garnered a great deal of public attention with his video of Worcester from above, shot with the use of a drone.)

The song begins with a sampled bit of the song “Pretty Girl With A Crooked Smile,” by DJ T Rock and Squashy Nice. The beautiful piano song gives way to beats and Fantom’s spoken introduction: “You know how the saying goes/you only get three beautiful women in your life/I feel like I already lost two.” On the video, the introduction is accompanied by a shot of Fantom walking in Boston’s Newbury Street neighborhood on a cold day, bundled in a pea coat. Soon, local artist Sharinna Shant'e Travieso enters the scene, and in short order Fantom is following her, rapping as he goes, while she remains oblivious to him.

We’ve seen this scene play out in a thousand movies and music videos, and we always suspend our disbelief a bit: We ignore that tiny voice in our head that says that there’s something a little stalkerish about the scenario, that the woman in the scene is being objectified in uncomfortable ways. We get seduced by the music. We buy into the fantasy that the “pretty girl with the crooked smile” will turn around and see our hero for who he is. This isn’t that song, and it certainly isn’t that music video.

Fantom allows a slight degree of whimsy into his voice as the music flows into a full-on rap. The song’s persona is full-in self-deprecating here, taking on responsibility for what is evidently a slew of mistakes. (The video can’t be embedded on Telegram.com because of language concerns, but it can be viewed here.) Travieso plays it perfectly. Her character barely registers Fantom at all, the only sign she’s aware of him at all is an air of annoyance.

The tone ratchets up a bit more with “and now I’m picking up the pieces/that we both left behind/when you told me I was leaving.” This, too, is familiar territory, and Fantom is an excellent rap technician, pulling off the increasingly rising pace and increasingly desperate tone. But what is made explicit by the video is another trope of these types of songs: The persona is really talking more about himself than he is the object of his affections and, to steal a joke, seems to feel he deserves a cookie for owning up to his flaws.



In the video, Fantom steals a bicycle to follow Travieso, and grabs a flower to give her. When the pursuit — which she’s still mostly oblivious to — ends, he gives her the flower. This is the point in the narrative where romantic fantasy usually wins, but not here: Disgusted, Travieso drops the flower on the ground and walks on, paying Fantom no more mind. The song ends with Fantom exclaiming a misogynist slur that rhymes with witch, and in that moment, totally shatters the song’s romantic fiction narrative: The problem is that the character is who he is, and for all his pretty songs, really doesn’t respect the object of his affection. And she’s not buying it. Not at all.

It’s a weird and refreshing take on the genre, and Kariuki’s video goes a long way toward framing the song and bringing out elements that might otherwise be more implied than explicit. But it’s all there, and even if one doesn’t grasp what Fantom’s doing by exploiting the tools of both love songs and hip-hop, there’s still a good groove to follow.



Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.