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Video: Common x Colbie Caillat x Elmo - "Belly Breathe"

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

Headline-wise, you can't really get better than Common x Elmo, for my money. The longtime okayplayer makes a Sesame Street cameo alongside his pop crush Colbie Caillat and the most tickle-ish Muppet, joining the ranks of Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Harry Belafonte, Michael Jackson and numerous other musical legends who've played "the street." At first glance, Com's anger-management rap does not compare with Hancock torturing a pint-size Tatiana Ali with sampling technology (possibly my favorite TV moment of all time? After the jump, just for fun). But that's just because you have not watched far enough to see him transform into a Muppet-monster (what other rapper has their own OFFICIAL Muppet??) and spot the cameo from young'un Dante Hoagland, already Okayplayer-famous for portraying a miniature Danny Brown in the "Grown Up" video. The real beauty of this clip is how it works on so many levels. On the one hand, you spliff-stars will enjoy rewinding it for the pure pop-culture surrealism value--especially that opening shot of Elmo exhaling and fogging up the camera. And yet in a few years if you keep putting those herbals to their approved medical usage you will all have bad-ass little 3-year olds like me and then TRUST you will be doing "Belly Breathe" dance without a trace of irony. And the rest of you haters just need to chill your inner monster the f**k out. Watch below:

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

spotted at SC