Tink – Ratchet Commandments
2015 · Directed by Dave Meyers
47K Likes
Best comments
1.“Lauryn Hill resurrected. Thank you, Jesus!”
More comments
- 2.“I feel like her and Missy Elliott would destroy a track together.”
- 3.“I remember when this barely had 30K views... and now it's over 2 million.”
The story
Picture a church service held in a dystopian warehouse, and the preacher is a Chicago rapper with neon-tipped nails and zero patience. Tink's Ratchet Commandments is a sermon on how to get your life together, delivered in a parade of costumes – choir girl, Egyptian queen, circus ringleader – to a congregation of backup dancers and kids who can't stop moving. Director Dave Meyers, who has made videos for Missy Elliott, OutKast and Rihanna, gives it that loud, cartoon-bright Missy feel. The FADER called it a master class in finger wagging.
Nearly everybody gets scolded. Timbaland shows up as her hype man and is the one guy she lets slide. Makes sense: he signed her. Tink joined Timbaland's Mosley Music Group and Epic Records in 2014, the year she finished high school, and around the time of this video Timbaland was telling a SXSW crowd that Aaliyah had come to him in a dream and called Tink "The One."
Then the story turned. Ratchet Commandments was billed as the first single from her debut album Think Tink, and it failed to chart. The album was finished and had a July 2015 release date, but Timbaland kept delaying it and it never came out. She finally got out of the deal at the end of 2017 and went independent. The preacher earned her own freedom in the end. Amen.
