Hit me baby one more time? Don’t mind if Tenacious D — a.k.a. Jack Black and Kyle Gass — do just that.
One week after Black, 54, and Gass, 63, set TikTok on fire with a clip of them covering Britney Spears’ breakthrough hit, “… Baby One More Time,” the duo dropped a full version of the song, coinciding with the release of Kung Fu Panda 4 (as the song plays over the film’s end credits). So, it’s fitting that Black employed the ancient martial art of corporate synergy by filming the music video at the film’s world premiere on Sunday, March 3, ensuring his costars could get in on the action.
In the video posted on Friday, March 8, the dapper Tenacious D duo (along with band members John Spiker, John Konesky and Scott Seiver) hit the red carpet to dance, strut and goof around. The two pose with a grinning Po (Black’s character from the series) before roping in Awkwafina, Ke Huy Quan and James Hong for some shenanigans.
Bryan Cranston seems pretty fired up to be included in the video, but his costar Dustin Hoffman seems a little less enthused. When Black goes in to hug the 86-year-old acting icon, Hoffman smiles while giving him an affectionate pat.
Black told The Hollywood Reporter how the cover came about. “The director, Mike [Mitchell], said, ‘Hey, we would love to have a Tenacious D song for the end credits.’ And I said, ‘Really? Can we do Britney Spears?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, let’s do … Baby One More Time’ for the kung fu aspect of that song,” Black recalled. “So we got in the recording studio and we did it and we’re really proud of the track.”
Black even said he would be open to collaborating with Spears, 42, on a duet version of the song or a new track. “I’m waiting by the phone,” he said at the premiere. “I got kicks! I don’t quite have Britney kicks, but you know, I got some moves.”
Spears burst onto the music scene in 1998 with “… Baby One More Time,” which hit No. 1 in numerous countries before she dropped her debut album of the same name in January 1999. Nine albums, 25 years and one terrible 13-year conservatorship later, Spears recently claimed she would “never return to the music industry.”
“When I write, I write for fun or I write for other people,” she wrote via Instagram on January 3. “For those of you who have read my book [The Woman in Me], there’s loads that you don’t know about me … I’ve written over 20 songs for other people in the past two years!”
