You’ve heard it, now watch it.

Directed by Anthony Mandler and filmed at Fort Totten Park in New York with a cast of over 80 extras, the video for the Blueprint 3’s “Run This Town” isn’t necessarily what one may have expected for Hova’s star-studded song. Sure, Kanye West and Rihanna make appearances to lend their vocals talents, but that’s really the only predictable element of this five minute video… well that and of course the fact Jay-Z is in it as well.

“There’s a tone and feeling to the song,” Mandler explained in an interview with MTV.com. “There’s a militia, a march and a kind of rambunctious energy to it that, for me, I immediately wanted to tap into. I showed [Jay] some references from the classic rebellious zones of the world.”

The result is a video conveying these tones, “a chaotic account of militia-like entities revolting, complete with Molotov-cocktail explosions, riot-like activity and the high-powered trio of Hov, Kanye West, and Rihanna performing in the midst of it all.”

“We wanted you to feel uneasy throughout the piece,” he said. “We wanted there to be a constant layer of tension through the piece. Even in the way I shot — where the camera comes by Jay, it doesn’t stop on him, it goes to Rihanna — there’s kind of this chaos of revealing and covering and concealing. And things happen offscreen that you don’t see.

“I think people are really gonna flip on this,” he added.

I think it’s safe to say they succeeded.

Categories: Watch
Tags: Jay-Z, Kanye West, Rihanna