Background The accompanying music video for "Ayo" was directed by
Colin Tilley and filmed in January 2015 in Los Angeles, California. The official video was released on February 3, 2015, and additional images from the shoot were released on
Instagram the same day. In the month prior to its release Brown teased the video by posting a photo on his Instagram account of one of the scenes showing himself and Tyga standing on a rooftop in fur coats. A
lyric video was also posted on Brown's Vevo account on January 22, 2015 displaying the words to the song overlaid atop a background of animated visual interpretations of the lyrics. Behind-the-scenes footage published on March 5, 2015 showed clips from the making of the music video narrated by the executive producer Andrew Listermann and assistant director Jamar Hawkins.
Synopsis The music video features Tyga and Chris Brown trying to upstage one another by showing off their luxury goods. In the opening shot Brown takes a
selfie in front of a swimming pool as a team of construction workers use a backhoe to dump money into it. The scene features Naressa Valdez. He is later shown floating on a gold-cushioned mattress in the money-filled water throughout the video. Brown posts the selfie video on a new social media app called
PingTank and Tyga responds by posting a
PingTank video of a gold toilet being installed in his mansion with gold bars dropping on top of it. Afterwards, he and Brown continue to go back and forth flaunting their wealthy lifestyles in a montage of scenes that includes a live tiger, the two of them playing chess with female models
fencing in the background, and beautiful women playing
polo on horses. Their outfits and a recurring shot of the pair rapping inside a
wind tunnel pay homage to
Diddy's and
Mase's 1997 classic "
Mo Money Mo Problems" video. The wind tunnel shot also includes a cameo by the dance duo
Les Twins. Next, the scene changes to a parking lot where Tyga and Brown rap and sing in front of rows of luxury cars with motorcycles circling around them. Finally, they meet up and race custom Lamborghinis past a police officer in a parked patrol car played by comedian
Mike Epps. Epps jokingly refers to Tyga as "Tigger" and quips that Brown is supposed to be doing
community service while chasing the two across a bridge. The video ends with Epps and his passengers exiting the patrol car, presumably in an attempt to apprehend Brown and Tyga.
Reception Dominique Zonyee of
The Boombox compared its "colorful visuals" to "a six-minute long short film", and noted "The R&B superstar and the West Coast MC take a page from Diddy's book in the 90's-inspired video with bucket hats and huge gold chains to match."
Hip-Hop Wireds Chris Thomas wrote that the shoot was "a dazzling visual" with "a classic 'anything you can do, I can do better' scenario between Brown and Tyga." Critics generally characterized the video's plot as both "fun and flashy" and "obnoxiously opulent". Adam Fleischer from
MTV News wrote, "between CB dumping a truckload of money into a pool and T-Raww showing off his gold toilet, this plays like a ridiculous episode of MTV Cribs." Similarly,
Stereogum music reviewer Tom Breihan called the storyline "sumptuous ridiculousness". "But," he added, "that won't stop me from enjoying the funhouse-mirror version of a balling-out 1998 rap video." Paul Thompson of
XXL Magazine concluded, "Basically everything that Brown and Tyga's joint album,
Fan Of a Fan, promises to be—larger than life, confusing, flossy, Technicolor—is realized in this six-minute clip." ==Live performances==