Ariana Grande channels Paula Abdul and Bob Fosse in "yes, and?" music video

Everyone was waiting for Ariana Grande to descend back into the world of pop music like , and nobody seems to know that better than Ariana herself. In her first single (and corresponding music video) under her own name in over three years, Grande is setting out to ask her haters, “yes, and?” The song, which dropped at midnight last night, is a full throated anthem to self confidence and authenticity.

Co written by longtime Ari collaborators Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh, “yes, and?” borrows heavily from ’s “Vogue” and other dance floor classics, while also remaining solidly in Grande’s wheelhouse. “Now, I’m so done with caring/what you think, no, I won’t hide/underneath your own projections/or change my most authentic life,” she sings, echoing a sentiment the star also shared in a long, , in which she wrote that she had “never felt more pride or joy of love while simultaneously feeling so deeply misunderstood by people who don’t know me.” The video, which dropped Friday morning, “says that shit with her chest,” to borrow Ari’s words.

While she hasn’t necessarily been known as a dancer in the past, here Grande is setting out to blow up that assumption like a brittle old slab of granite... literally. As statues and stereotypes crumble around her, Grande twirls herself into a conversation started by Bob Fosse’s and advanced by pop—and specifically dance—icon Paula Abdul in her 1989 video for “ .” It’s a big swing to emulate these iconic moments and Grande is certainly no Abdul movement wise, but it still mostly pays off for her.

In this format, Grande is able to literally face down her critics—they’re shown rolling their eyes about everything from her ponytail to her hiatus in an elevator ride before the performance—and win. By the end of the video, those same skeptics are dancing and clapping along to the beat, completely taken with Grande’s vision of the world.

Whether real life audiences will do the same, especially as the singer rolls out more singles from her upcoming seventh studio album, , remains to be seen. But either way, it seems like Grande will keep doing her thing, with or without anyone else’s approval. If they come for her, she’ll just “keep moving like, ‘what’s next?’”.