You might not peg Lil Wayne for the jealous type, but after appearing in Chris Brown's "Look at Me Now" video, Weezy was green with envy. So much so that he enlisted that video's director, Colin Tilley, to shoot his latest Tha Carter IV clip, "John."
"When I shot the 'Look at Me Now' video, I was envious," Lil Tunechi admitted to Sway in an exclusive sit-down with MTV News. "I was mad that I was on a video that was that damn good and it wasn't mine."
The Chris Brown video, which featured both Weezy and Busta Rhymes, immediately sparked the interest of the Young Money CEO. "When I looked around and noticed that I was standing on top of an ambulance and they had somebody doing doughnuts on a motor bike. They had another dude on a skateboard doin' tricks, they had people around a bonfire, they had people dancin', everybody was dressed cool. Busta and Chris up here, Chris doin' moves with his body that I didn't even know that your body could do," Wayne recalled. "I looked around when he said, 'Action.' All that went on during action. All that I just named; all that went on during one single action."
Weezy F. was so impressed that when it was time to shoot "John," he brought Tilley into the fold.
"When I first talked to Wayne about the video, we had just done the 'Look at Me Now' video," Tilley told earlier this month. "And he really liked the whole feel of that video, how there was just so much goin' on and just the whole energy and colors and all that. That's pretty much what they gave me when they gave me the song. They were like, 'We just love that energy and we want that whole vibe from it.' "
Filmed in Miami, "John" is far from glamorous, instead focusing on grit and grime. The clip finds Wayne and guest rapper Rick Ross performing inside an abandoned warehouse and outside of a dock. For Wayne, it was the perfect look for his latest street single.
"I had the 'John' song. I just put 'John' out there, of course, it's just a club banger. It's something to see, it's just something raw. I know that it's not gonna get too much [airplay] because of the lyrical content — it's not gonna get too much. It was just something to put out there, people are waiting for something so I just put it out there."
What do you think of Lil Wayne's "John" video? Let us know in the comments!