New Orleans rapper Juvenile wants you to “vax that thing up.”
In a new video, the rapper tells female fans, “Girl you look good once you vax that thang up, you a handsome young brother once you vax that thang up.”
The rap is a music-video remake of his 1999 hit, “Back That Thang Up.”
The nearly two-minute parody is part of a collaboration with BLK, the dating app for Black singles, to promote COVID-19 vaccination as the nationwide push begins to stall out.
The video features young people using the app, heading to outdoor vaccination tents and, yes, plenty of posteriors.
The message is pretty clear: If you want to get freaky this summer, you should join the roughly 47% of the U.S. population that is fully vaccinated.
“Before you find a date, yeah, you gotta wait, yeah; Gotta go vaccinate, yeah, get it straight, yeah,” Juvenile says before making it rain with proof-of-vaccination cards.
Later in the song, rapper Mia X advises: “If you wanna smash some dude named Scott/Go get the shot, go, go get the shot.”
The White House is relying on private industry to push the shots in parallel with government efforts. Earlier this year, it highlighted efforts by a number of dating apps to promote vaccination.
Polling shows white conservatives are among the most resistant to the vaccines, but officials want to lift rates among minority populations who are distrustful of government efforts for historical reasons, notably the Tuskegee syphilis study that mistreated Black men.
