On January 24, Grammy-winning rap mogul and big spender 2 Chainz dropped a new track and music video. Within days, it was the number-one trending hip-hop track and number-three video in the USA on YouTube’s Vevo. It was also the most elaborate product demo in history. Called “Expensify This,” it was the world’s first music video you can expense. Expensify is a game-changing app that lets you do your expenses by simply snapping a photo of a receipt.

To demonstrate that, we created an original track and interactive music video with 2 Chainz, integrating half-a-million dollars’ worth of receipts, and so got people experiencing the Expensify app. While 2 Chainz lived the life of a baller, viewers could snap a photo of the receipts for all the lavish items that appeared in the video, to get reimbursed actual cash—which is exactly how the app works in real life.

Atlanta’s king of hip-hop, 2 Chainz, is known as a big spender, thanks to his Vice TV show Most Expensivest, and his music is full of references to his baller lifestyle. We timed our campaign with the launch of 2 Chainz’s new album, to leverage that surrounding hype. We created a writers’ room with 2 Chainz and several Saturday Night Live Emmy-winning (for Outstanding Music and Lyrics) writers. We also collaborated with renowned music producer Mustard, known for his work with Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott and Jay-Z, to create an original track. Culturally, there was a negative reaction to Maroon 5 (a non-Atlanta-based artist) being selected to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show—but we got favorable press for partnering with a real Atlanta hip-hop artist. Deep collaboration with Expensify’s engineering department, to hard-code a new release of the Expensify app, was also required.

The VFX House designed the CG ice car, which was influenced by classic supercars from the 1970s. The director’s brief was to make the car appear actually drivable. No part of its design could feel like it wasn’t shot in-camera. We built a drivable chassis with a real interior, which 2Chainz and the actors could sit in.

The car underwent R&D for the ice within three different environments. For reference, we filmed large blocks of ice on set, focusing on how the ice refracted the environment and how the light played through different densities.

The VFX House added frost to the interior walls of the cave, reskinned the main house in pink designer leather and did FX work for the teleporter and laser.

The third eye was prosthetic, which the VFX House animated to move and emote in time with the actor. The VFX House composited all QR codes throughout.