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Lil Nas X – Panini (Official Video)

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Lil Nas X turns his own fame into a cyberpunk chase scene, and this time the girl running from him is Disney Channel’s Skai Jackson.

On September 5, 2019, Lil Nas X dropped the official video for “Panini,” the follow-up single to “Old Town Road” off his debut EP, 7. Directed by visual effects filmmaker Mike Diva and produced by Lord Danger, the clip drops Jackson into a neon-drenched, Blade Runner-style metropolis where she can’t shake Lil Nas X no matter where she turns. By the time the video hit YouTube, “Panini” had already racked up more than 290 million global audio streams.

• The video, built from an original concept by Lil Nas X himself, stars Skai Jackson as a disillusioned citizen trying to escape a rapper who’s suddenly everywhere — on billboards, in her rideshare, on her digital displays.
• “Panini” is named for the character from Cartoon Network’s Chowder, and Lil Nas X has said the song isn’t a love story — it’s about early fans who feel possessive of an artist and abandoned once he blows up.
• Production ran roughly 10 weeks with heavy VFX from Chimney; filming started in mid-July 2019, including shots at Santee Alley in the Los Angeles Fashion District.

A Blade Runner Chase Through a City That Won’t Let Her Escape Him

Jackson’s character spends most of the video trying to get away from a version of Lil Nas X that has essentially colonized the skyline. He hacks her screens, materializes on towering holographic billboards, and at one point lands directly on the windshield of her flying rideshare vehicle mid-flight. In a futuristic alleyway, he leads a full choreographed routine flanked by robot backup dancers, the kind of sequence that leans hard into the sci-fi aesthetic Mike Diva and Lord Danger built for the shoot. By the final scene, she stops running and smiles — the holdout has been won over.

The Real Meaning Behind “Don’t You Be a Meanie”

The song’s hook — “Hey Panini, don’t you be a meanie” — borrows directly from the Chowder character, but the story underneath it has nothing to do with cartoons or romance. Lil Nas X has framed “Panini” as a message to the early supporters who found him before “Old Town Road” turned him into a crossover phenomenon, fans who can feel territorial about an artist and resentful once the rest of the world catches on.

“Panini” isn’t a love song — it’s Lil Nas X answering the fans who loved him underground and now feel like they’re losing him to everyone else.

Ten Weeks, One Alley, and a City Built From Scratch

Getting the cyberpunk metropolis on screen took closer to 10 weeks of production, with Chimney handling the bulk of the visual effects work needed to turn ordinary Los Angeles locations into a holographic-billboard skyline. Filming began in mid-July 2019 and included real-world footage shot at Santee Alley, the crowded outdoor market in the LA Fashion District, before VFX artists layered in the flying cars and towering ads. The result matches the ambition Lil Nas X showed when he first pitched the concept himself rather than handing the treatment entirely to Diva and Lord Danger.

A Single Already Running Up the Numbers

None of this was happening in a vacuum. “Panini” arrived with the pressure of following one of the biggest singles in recent memory, and it had already cleared 290 million global audio streams before the video even premiered. That kind of number, for a follow-up single rather than the lead hit, is exactly the sort of pressure the video’s chase concept plays into — Lil Nas X literally can’t be escaped, on the charts or on screen.

What happens next for Lil Nas X off the back of “Panini” and “Old Town Road” is still an open question, but the video itself already did its job: it gave Skai Jackson a full sci-fi production to run through, gave Mike Diva and Lord Danger a Blade Runner homage to show off, and gave a song about being suffocated by early fandom its own inescapable visual joke.