Last week, XXLMag.com broke the news that Mac Miller will be appearing on the remix to Maroon 5’s chart-topping song, “Moves Like Jagger” with Christina Aguilera. XXL recently chopped it with the song’s producer, Benny Blanco, to find out more details on the unexpected collaboration.

Blanco—who is responsible for some of the biggest pop singles over the last few years, including Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” and Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” among others—told XXL that it was his idea to put the 2011 XXL Freshman on the track.

“Well, here’s what happened. You know I’ve been down with Mac a while ’cause I’m down with [Mac's label] Rostrum [Records],” he says. “And so I was actually sitting with one of my homies, Zvi [Edelman, vice president of A&R at Atlantic], he’s the dude that signed Wiz [Khalifa]. We were listening to it. I was like, ‘Yo, who could we put on this song?’ ’Cause, we were trying to get someone to do a remix. I was like, ‘I know exactly who,’ because I just put Mac on another remix.”

Blanco said, at that point he reached out to Maroon 5 frontman, Adam Levine, who was all for it.

“So, I got Adam hip to it and, he was like, ‘Oh yeah, I seen some of [Mac’s] shit online and stuff,’” Blanco said. “He knew the ‘Donald Trump’ joint. I played him like ‘Frick Park Market’ and all those other records. And, he was like, ‘Yo, this shit is crazy. Get him on it.’ So, Mac was in town, and he just came through the studio. We chilled for a little bit and then he dropped it.”

During a break from his European tour last week, Mac emailed XXL to talk about how shocked he was when Blanco invited him to jump on the track.

“Maroon 5 is ill, very ill,” he wrote. "Benny reached out to get me on the jam, and to be honest, at first I didn’t really believe him. I was like, these dudes could get any rapper they wanted on their jam, why would they want me? However, they were serious. When I was in NY I went to the studio with Benny to do it. We chopped it up for a while, then I just wrote my verses and laid them down.”

“I don’t know why, the thought of Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera and myself on a jam, I just didn’t think it would fly,” he continued. “But, I saw Adam Levine was following me on Twitter so I hit him up and thanked him for the opportunity and he said that everyone loved it. Shit is ill. I love the jam, the music video to it actually came on when I was writing the verses in the studio. What are the odds? Well, actually pretty high considering it was the No.1 song for a while.”

Blanco told XXL that the remix has the same feel as the original, until Mac’s part, where the beat switches to a more down South vibe.

As previously reported, the song is scheduled to hit radio next week and will be available on iTunes on October 4. —Jesse Gissen

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