myselebrity: Chris Brown Calls 'Look At Me Now' His 'First Rap Video'

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Chris Brown Calls 'Look At Me Now' His 'First Rap Video'

C.Breezy gets assists from Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes and dons Jordans for his best Mars Blackmon impression in bouncy new clip.
By Rebecca Thomas

Chris Brown
Photo: MTV News

It's gotta be the moves. Chris Brown, all rubbery limbs and sporting a Mars Blackmon-inspired bicycle cap, shows off some fleet-footed footwork in his new "Look at Me Now" video. With looks from Young Money captain Lil Wayne and a fire-breathing Busta Rhymes, a pile of '90s-era baggy sweats and tees, a series of ferocious dance battles, as well as an ode to those classic Nike/Jordan spots, the dizzying clip leaves you breathless. And that's exactly how Chris wanted it.

" 'Look at Me Now' is kind of like my first rap, rap video," Chris laughed when he sat down with MTV News on Friday. "I wanted to do like old school, not really old school but, like, back-in-the-day [style]."

Back in the day, for the 21-year-old, meant reviving 1990s staples like "big baggy clothes" and "a lot of art, graffiti." "I tried to blend all of those components into one and make it fun and exciting," he told us.

With the song's swirling production (courtesy of Diplo and Jean Baptiste) setting the breakneck pace, the Collin Tilley-directed video for "Look at Me Now" lets C.Breezy showcase his inner-MC — Brown instructs his doubters to "say hi" to a section of his anatomy some fans may now be all too familiar with — but it also lets him play with his budding Renaissance Man thing, capturing Chris as crooner, dancer and artist.

In several hilarious frames, the F.A.M.E. singer turns up cheesing in the horn-rimmed glasses and baseball jersey that were the signature of director Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon creation, a bespectacled superfan who hawked Jordans in the early '90s for Nike. In those vintage ads, Mars set out to decode just what made baller Michael Jordan "the best player in the universe" — eventually ruling out the extra-long shorts, the haircut, etc., and zeroing in one element: "it's gotta be the shoes."

"I kind of did the Mars Blackmon outfit with the Brooklyn [hat] and the whole [outfit], I always was a fan of that and that was always fresh to me when I saw Spike Lee with Jordan," Chris explained. "So I was like, man, I'mma do that outfit just to pay tribute to him."

Of course, Chris didn't pull off his first official hip-hop vid on his own. Assists from Lil Tunechi and Busta give the visual added heft. And Brown said the song, like the video, works because the collabos are organic. (Weezy's a longtime collaborator and Busta's rapid-fire flow feels tailor-made for the track.)

"Working with Wayne is always incredible. I've had Wayne on every single album I've done," he added. "Being able to work with these guys is incredible," he said of Bus and Wayne. "I think I build most of my collaborations off of the relationships that I built with these guys over the years."

Chris' new album, F.A.M.E., drops on Tuesday.

What do you think of the "Look at Me Now" video? Tell us in the comments!

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