So I just saw the video for Rihanna’s new single, “Rude Boy,” and like a kitten with a dangling piece of string, I am fascinated.

True, this video isn’t doing something shockingly new. In her “Galang” video, M.I.A. uses the same Keith Haring/Basquiat/80s Graffiti aesthetic, and after seeing the set for the Broadway musical Fela!, I realize that Rihanna’s clip also has elements of AfroBeat style. And take a look at this 90s-tastic video from Vanessa Williams. There’s a total resemblance.

(And yes… that’s the second time I’ve written about that Vanessa Williams video.)

But despite its obvious influences, the Rihanna video, directed by Melina Matsoukas, has a little something extra. For one, the production design is flawless. It’s absorbing to notice just how carefully the creative team has stitched the clip’s various visual styles together, so that the stuffed lion and the animated crown and the black-and-white footage look like they exist in the same world. And then there’s the colors, which are so sharp and exciting they maek the screen feel alive.

Meanwhile, because people keep getting shadowed by screen-printed versions of themselves, the clip adds unusual dynamism to the familiar “stand still, look sexy” music video strategy.  It also seems important to me that this clip moves slowly, at least by music video standards. Isntead of frantic jump cuts, we get relatively languorous shots that let each surreal image sink in. This matches the tempo of the song, and it gives a sexy confidence to what we’re seeing.

I can’t discount Rihanna, either. Her intensity really sells the whole package.

What do you guys think of this piece of pop art?

Update: Props to my colleague Ginger (star of that silent movie I made) for pointing out that “rude boys” are a fundamental part of ska culture and that their iconography (including the lion) appears in this video. I learn something every day!