2 Chainz - Birthday Song ft. Kanye West (Explicit Version)

What this video is

Released on August 30, 2012, 'Birthday Song' arrived as the second single from 2 Chainz's debut studio album 'Based on a T.R.U. Story' on Def Jam Recordings — a landmark moment in the commercial mainstreaming of Atlanta trap rap. The collaboration with Kanye West, who also co-produced the track alongside Sonny Digital, placed 2 Chainz squarely within the G.O.O.D. Music ecosystem at the height of that label's…

Why it matters

A key visual artifact of the early 2010s trap-to-mainstream pipeline, this video documents the moment Atlanta trap aesthetics fused with the high-concept G.O.O.D. Music creative orbit. Its surrealist subversion of strip-club/party hip-hop video tropes — executed by a European fine-art director —…

The director

Andreas Nilsson is a Swedish director and classically trained painter and sculptor based in Malmö, Sweden. He grew up in the Swedish countryside, studied painting and sculpture in Gothenburg, and later became a set designer for the Royal Theatre in Stockholm…