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Bruno Mars And Cardi B 'Finesse' The Remix With 'In Living Color'-Inspired Video

The retro Cross Colours fits. The New Jack Swing sound. The In Living Colorvideo homage. Bruno Mars has proven time and again it's his prerogative todo what he wants to do — especially when it comes to reigniting the charts with the sounds of '90s funk and R&B.

His "Finesse" remix, featuring Cardi B, is another guaranteed hit from his 2017 album 24K. Mars lifts a page straight out of New Jack Swing producer Teddy Riley's sonic playbook and recasts the '90s aesthetic stylized by such New Jack Swing-affiliated artists as Bobby Brown and Heavy D for the video. Hev, of course, penned and performed the classic theme song to the Keenan Ivory Wayans sketch comedy series In Living Color, which serves as inspiration for the look and theme of the video — all the way down to show's resident dance crew, The Fly Girls. (You half expect Jenny from the Block, a former Fly Girl, to come out doing the Cabbage Patch.)

But this is all Cardi's show to steal. "I went from dollar bills, now we poppin' rubber bands / Bruno, sang to me while I do my money dance," she raps on the intro. Looks like the "Bodak Yellow" queen has finessed herself another one.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Rodney Carmichael is NPR Music's hip-hop staff writer. An Atlanta-bred cultural critic, he helped document the city's rise as rap's reigning capital for a decade while serving on staff as music editor, culture writer and senior writer for the defunct alt-weekly Creative Loafing.