What do you do when your song has already topped the Billboard Hot 100? Recruit two of the biggest names in music for the remix, of course! 24kGoldn, the hip-hop sensation out of the Bay Area, teamed with Puerto Rico’s iann dior to capture a whole “mood” with their lively jam. To keep the vibe going (and to possibly get the song back at the No. 1 position), the duo reunited Justin Bieber and J Balvin on the remix. Each superstar added a cheeky verse in their signature styles.
“I know at times I can have a couple screws loose / I’m tryna connect to your body, girl, like it’s Bluetooth,” Justin sings in his verse, delivering his usual smooth harmonies paired with lyrics that just slightly veer into R-rated territory. Meanwhile, J Balvin sang his entire verse in Spanish, and also got playful with lyrics that translated to lines like, “If I take out your genie, I will not rub your lamp again.” The new remix also came with a lyric video inspired by retro video games, which you can watch above.
“Mood” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 84 in late August, and quickly skyrocketed up the chart. In its second week, it reached No. 26, and continued to climb. It cracked the Top 10 four weeks after entering the chart and hung around near the top the following month. It jockeyed with heavy hitters like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” BTS’s “Dynamite,” Drake and Lil Durk’s “Laugh Now Cry Later,” DaBaby and Roddy Ricch’s “Rockstar,” and The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” for position. It finally reached No. 1 the week before Halloween, and stayed there until Ariana Grande unseated it with “Positions.”
Ahead of this remix’s release, Justin had two other songs on the Hot 100: “Holy,” his collaboration with Chance The Rapper, and “Lonely,” his song with Benny Blanco. Justin topped the Billboard charts previously in 2020 with “Stuck With U,” his song with Ariana Grande. While J Balvin hasn’t replicated that Billboard Hot 100 success, he did top the Billboard U.S. Latin charts with “Un Dia,” his collab with Dua Lipa, Bad Bunny and Tainy.
https://t.co/9RLmq4aAlZ https://t.co/JWeXyGxP4b
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) November 4, 2020
Justin and J Balvin previously collaborated together on a remix of “Sorry,” the chart-topping smash from Justin’s 2015 album, Purpose. Earlier in 2020, Justin was seen filming a music video for “La Bomba,” a Spanish-language single he teased during an episode of his YouTube Original docuseries, Seasons, per Billboard. “La Bomba” wasn’t included on Changes, the album he dropped at the start of the year, but it’s reportedly a standalone single that features J Balvin.
Oddly enough, both Justin and J Balvin spoke about their “moods” – aka their mental health struggles – in the days before the release of this remix. In the premiere episode of Next Chapter, Justin’s new YouTube documentary, he spoke about how his massive amount of fame at such a young age drove him to a dark place. “There was so many people who were just so mean. Random people saying, ‘you suck,’ ‘you look like a girl.’ I would shake it off and act like it didn’t bother me, but that stuff bothered me,” said Justin. “There was times where I was really, really suicidal. The pain was so consistent. I was just suffering. So, I’m just like, man, I would rather not feel this than feel this.”
J Balvin also opened up with dealing with his mental health through a series of Instagram Stories. “I know I’ve been a bit absent from social media. But like every human being, I’ve been tested,” he said on Nov. 3, per Page Six. “In this case, once again I was dealing with anxiety and a bit of depression. I don’t like to act, I don’t like to fake it, ‘Ah, happiness. Everything is perfect.’ No, because I’m a human being just like everyone else and I’m also fragile and very vulnerable, possibly even more so than many of you.”
“Soon this will pass just like every storm, and I’ll be on here again talking more with you all, making jokes because just acting like it, no. I’m not up for that,” he added. “I have to always be real and share what I feel in the moment. I love you all very much.”