SameOldShawn: I wanted to talk about Maino for a second, because your first single's with him. For people who haven't heard it yet, the conceit of the song is that you guys talk about your tough friend Maino who's gonna solve all your problems...

Eric Rosenthal, ItsTheReal: Wouldn't you?

SOS: Yeah, right. And he comes in at the end of the song and says, I don't know who you think you're dealing with, but I don't do that anymore. It was so funny, and it finds him playing both with and against his tough guy, I-was-in-the-pen image. And he's even in the video in glasses and a pocket protector...

Jeff Rosenthal, ItsTheReal: First of all, he was the one who came in with the bow tie and surprised us. He walked in and I go, "You look like Louis Farrakhan."

ER: He was all about it

SOS: So he was game when you approached him with this?

ER: Now, here's the thing. He doesn't just do this for anyone

JR: We have a rapport with him. He did an ItsTheReal video of us where we did a parody of that kid who was talking tough on Facebook and then his uncle whipped him with his belt or whatever. So we did a parody of that a couple years ago

ER: We've seen him out at different events

JR: But when we were doing this project specifically, he came over to our apartment at 3 AM in his Bentley. We drove around for an hour listening to our music, and he's just slamming on the gas, going, "You motherfuckers, you got it right!"

ER: So he understands it, and he's hilarious. Like, in real life, he's hilarious. He's a very threatening person to everyone except for us. He's really a sweetheart. So we wrote the song with him in mind, we explained the idea to him, and the next day we had our verse. So he's all about it

When the video came to be, shot by Rik Cordero, he was all about it. Like Jeff said, he brought the bow tie, he brought the shirt, and he was ready to go. So we're glad that it's gotten a great reaction so far. We're really happy for Maino, because it shows a different side to him, where for most of his career it was just like, well, Maino's big and bad