Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am stunned a Hollywood busker who was singing his song by joining in for a jam. Busker Levi Mitchell was performing the Black Eyed Peas chart-topper “I Gotta Feeling” at the Ovation Hollywood mall when the hip hop star stopped by to enjoy the tune.
Mitchell was performing solo with his guitar and singing, but Will.i.am decided to spice things up after a minute by jumping on the second mic and singing along with “I Gotta Feeling”. Mitchell then looped his guitar part and beatboxed while Will.i.am rapped, unsurprisingly drawing quite a crowd very quickly, as you can see in the video below.
The duo then transitioned to another Black Eyed Peas hit “Where Is the Love?”. The surprise street jam was quite a hit itself on YouTube, with the video attracting a whopping 17.8 million views on YouTube. As Mitchell played, Will.i.am then shared a message about togetherness and love defeating ignorance and hate, which tied in with the message of “Where Is the Love?”.
While Will.i.am was on the mic he also told Mitchell “thank you for singing these songs. I was just randomly driving down the street and thought ‘oh, he’s playing one of our songs’. And I just wanted to come out here and rock with you on the corner. So thanks for keeping the love alive,” which got a big cheer from the audience. You can check out the original recording of “Where is the Love?” in the video below.
Music lovers really enjoyed the vibe of the video online, sharing comments like “I just love that so many people stopped to listen and enjoy these few minutes of joy and peace. Our lives need more moments like these,” and “They did a really great job performing together and I think Will.i.am did a great job of honoring the street performer’s voice!”
Mitchell clearly knows how to give the people what they want, as for his busking set he chose the two most popular Black Eyed Peas songs. “I Gotta Feeling” is their most streamed song on Spotify, with 1.1 billion streams, while “Where is the Love?” is in second place with 851 million streams.
If you would like to see more from Black Eyed Peas, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow them on Facebook or Instagram. You can also visit their official website for more information.