PSY and MC Hammer‘s explosive performance during this year’s American Music Awards, where they joyously mashed “Gangnam Style” with “2 Legit 2 Quit,” may have given the world a glimpse at the budding of a beautiful musical friendship.
“Well, we absolutely love working together,” Hammer told Billboard shortly after the performance. “He’s a very humble man and a hard worker and I love working with him. We are cooking in the kitchen right now.”
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AMAs 2012: Videos, Photos, Headlines |
The man behind hits like “U Can’t Touch This” and “Pray” added reassuringly, “We’ll try to make it a surprise for you.”
For PSY, who in a week’s time will possess the most viewed YouTube video of all time, the AMAs collaboration with Hammer came about after he requested, and was granted, the closing slot during the ABC telecast. The idea itself was born out of a conversation with his manager.
“When I requested to close the show, me and my manager Scooter Braun talked a lot about… [it needed] to be special, to be big, to be massive, to be you know, something,” he told us. “So we had a conversation on the phone — I was in Korea — and all of a sudden Scooter says ‘How about MC Hammer?'”
The K-Pop star describes ten seconds of dead air after Braun said that. “And at the eleventh second we said the same thing at the same time, which was ‘WTF.'”
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The result will likely go down as the highlight of the entire show on Sunday. Midway through his performance of “Gangnam,” PSY introduced Hammer who sang a few bars of “2 Legit” and danced like someone 20 years his junior (he turned 50 this year).
Both artists have something in common, aside from impeccable taste in baggy pants. In 1991, “2 Legit 2 Quit” reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, where “Style” resides as of press time. He had spent seven consecutive weeks at No. 2, but with this high profile performance at the AMAs, the song is expected to make gains yet again when the chart updates on Thursday.