Review: Megan Thee Stallion & Dua Lipa's "Sweetest Pie"

What happens when two seasoned hitmakers collaborate on an audio-visual feast which takes inspiration from sci-fi and Salvador Dali?

Released on March 11, 2022, the music video “Sweetest Pie” opens with Megan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa writhing, not uncharacteristically, to each baseline.

While award-winning director Dave Myers is no stranger to the cinematic music-video genre, “Sweetest Pie” maneuvers his artistry to a new realm.

With a seasoned portfolio, ranging from Billie Eilish in 2019, and extending way back to OutKast’s “Bombs Over Bagdad” in 2001, Dave Myer’s artistry in creating fantasy technicolor visuals does not fail to disappoint.

This of course is great news for all of you budding filmmakers out there, as I’m certain you’ll appreciate the artistic variations of Dave Myer’s videos past and present with his body of work that extends across multiple musical genres.

The Opening Scene.

Set in a densely wooded forest, when you watch the opening scenes, you’ll observe that the forest visuals are hyper-real with a VR quality displayed to perfection in its cinematography.

In the first few scenes, two male figures walk tentatively through the dense woodland toward the jaws of a mythical spider-like creature with glowing red eyes.

As the men draw closer, it becomes apparent that within the creature’s jaws stands our two protagonists, Megan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa.

The musicality of “Sweetest Pie” blends syrupy sweet piano notes and combines this chirpiness, with soft bass notes, interspersed with rapping - courtesy of Thee Stallion.

While in this collaboration, the musical synergy creates a softer RnB effect, especially when you contrast this with the harsher bass notes of Megan’s earlier collabs, notably “WAP” with Cardi B.

Cut to the next scene, and both women are holding court in a grand Rococo-style parlor reminiscent of the period.

With its abundance of gilt embellished props and candy-pastels, imagine Marie Antoinette on magic mushrooms and you’ll have an accurate idea of the style the director conveys here.

While Megan and Dua treat their male visitors to a floor show of writhing around in a series of boned corsets - if you’re picturing an episode of “Bridgerton”, this is not it.

A sinister edge takes hold, after the cakes and frivolity from the parlor, as our leads are decked out in even less clothing in what appears to be a sacrificial arena-styled den, complete with a boiling cauldron taking center stage.

Sadly, for the two hapless male guests, they now find themselves immersed within the cauldron as they’re slowly boiled… At this point, the visuals move into Dali-esque territory, with a part of Dua Lipa’s face replaced with Cherry Pie…

The Announcement.

Leading up to the announcement of “Sweetest Pie”, Megan Thee Stallion teased fans with a series of Tweets in the wake of the release.

For those of you that follow Dua Lipa or Megan Thee Stallion on social media, it will come as no surprise that “Sweetest Pie” is a long-awaited collaboration between the two stars.

A collaboration that has delighted their fans especially given the fact that since 2020, fan-made mash-ups featuring Megan rapping to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” have done the rounds on Twitter over the past 18 months.

While “Levitating” is a song where sugary pop meets mainstream rap, its broad appeal and the introduction of Megan, was a collab that set the wheels in motion. Moreover, in some fan-made renditions, the imagined ode to “Levitating” has gone viral across Twitter.

Rumour has it, that It was this virality that piqued Megan’s interest. However, it wasn’t until Q1, 2022 that the dream collab would come to fruition.

With the hyper-real fantasy and the suggestive dance sequences, “Sweetest Pie” serves up the bog-standard ingredients one comes to expect from a female-fronted music video.

And, while the song’s lyrics and composition, in itself may not wind up being so memorable, the music video stands by itself in all its hyper-real, fantasy-channeled glory.

Author: Ella Graysun