Dallas rapper BigXthaPlug and pop star Ava Max stood in a burning mansion this week, and as marketing goes, the room matched the record. The video for their new single “BURN” dropped October 10 on his official channel and has already pushed past 1.49 million views. The song arrived a day earlier through UnitedMasters as the second preview of his fourth album, BETTER OVER TIME, due October 30.
The record itself is a betrayal confession. Over the heavy Texas trap bass his run is built on, BigXthaPlug spends two verses on the friends who flipped on him. “Fool me once, but I can’t go for foolish s**t again. Them people smile off in your face, but they true colors ain’t they skin,” he raps, as iHeartRadio quotes it, before the turn: “When s**t get wicked, they gon’ stab your back and always bite your hand.” Ava Max carries the hook in full dance-pop mode, which the official description frames as the whole experiment: Southern hip-hop delivery against melodic pop vocals, Texas against the world.
Jerry Morkos directs, per the on-screen credit, and the video cuts between three worlds: an ornate room genuinely on fire, papers and money drifting through the flames while both artists stand in it like it is normal; a dim, courtroom-still scene with BigX in shirt and tie, head bowed; and a smoke-hazed night street washed in red and blue. It is the most cinematic the Dallas rapper has looked on camera, and it matches the verse: everything in frame is burning except him.
BETTER OVER TIME arrives October 30 with a lineup he revealed through a mountain of televisions: GloRilla, Lil Yachty, Leon Thomas, Fridayy, Belly Gang Kushington, Babyface Ray, Ro$ama and Loe Shimmy, alongside Ava Max. Lead single “LITE” with Belly Gang Kushington landed in August, famously packaged with his own mugshot after a recent arrest, and his Texas trap expansion has been building toward this pop crossover all year. GloRilla, no stranger to her own arrest headlines, shows up on the tracklist too.
The math is simple for a 28-year-old from Dallas on UnitedMasters: 1.49 million views in four days on a pop collaboration, a 15-track-shaped bet due in two weeks, and a fire marshal somewhere shaking his head. If the rest of BETTER OVER TIME burns like this, October 30 is a date. Watch BURN above.
