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When Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz premiered their video for “On To The Next One” on New Year’s Eve the world was abuzz with rumors that the Jigga man was  confirming rumors that he was in ties with an underground secret society.

The video’s dark imagery and gothic undertones led to numerous YouTube videos breaking down the visual to expose the seemingly dark forces behind it and Jay’s ties to the Illuminati and FreeMasonry.

Now for the first time the director of the video Sam Brown is speaking out to defend his work.

Brown spoke in an interview with Vibe on his product saying that the “visually illiterate” public got it all wrong, there are no ties with the video to any culture or belief system.

“I think when you’re dealing in abstract imagery people are going to want to draw lines between things and make sense of it. However, I’ve always felt that the viewing public was, in general, extremely visually literate. They don’t always want or need things to be spelt out for them. One of the great things about music videos are they can be enjoyed purely visually—it doesn’t need to mean anything or make any sense….

There is imagery in this video that is drawn from all over the place. None of it is owned by any one culture or belief system. You can connect anything if you try hard enough, and make it mean anything you want it to.”

He also added to Vibe that while Jay gave him a “loose brief” of the concept for the video, ultimately the idea for the video was his.

“He gave me a very loose brief, and made it clear that we should be progressive with the video. All the imagery was thought up by me and was a response to the track itself.

For those interested, the idea is actually about a funeral for old imagery and ideas, hence all the gothic and oppressive stuff. I was also trying to contradict the excess of hip-hop videos by making something brutally simple and claustrophobic.”

See? It all makes sense now.

Jay’s not illumanati, Sam Brown is….right?

Please…get a life people, it’s all abstract.