New York, NY – Lil Wayne’s second single off of his highly anticipated ‘Tha Carter IV’ entitled ‘John’ gracefully sampled the genius hook from his Hip-Hop brethren Ricky Ross off of the phenomenal track ‘I’m Not a Star.’  In return, Lil Wayne respectively asked Ross to feature on the track for the hook and his own verse. The official music video to that song leaked sometime in April and went viral before the final cut was even completed. Nevertheless, that video still looked like a movie all on its own.

The finished version of the music video ‘John’ was released today (May 12) and premiered on his Vevo. Earlier in the week, veteran director, Colin Tilley, spoke with MTV News about the video and the direction that he and Wayne took it.

These were his comments:

When I first talked to Wayne about the video, we had just done the ‘Look at Me Now’ video, 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,” Tilley said of the Chris Brown clip that he and Tunechi worked on together. “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.”

The video was in its entirety in Miami. Wayne and Ross performed inside an abandoned warehouse and outside on a dock. Interestingly enough, Ross displays his verse from a wheelchair with spinners. Tilley stated that there was no specific reasoning behind putting Ross in the wheelchair; it was just what he envisioned when he first heard the song.

MTV News then inquired about his thoughts when he heard that a rough draft of the video was leaked prematurely. He went in to discuss the differences between the draft and the revised version of the official music video:

“To me, it’s night and day, just because every single shot in the video has something different, it’s got some kind of surprise for everybody’s eyes. I like to create an experience when you’re watching video. It’s got different animals, just crazy stuff.”
 
Keep posted to 24hourhiphop.com for more updated news on Lil Wayne.

Checkout the completed version of ‘John:’