How did Samm Levine of 'Freaks and Geeks' end up in Ice Cube's 'Drop Girl' video?

There’s a lot going on in the just-released music video for Ice Cube’s “Drop Girl,” the latest single from his forthcoming album Everythang’s Corrupt: The giant heads of Cube and his collaborators RedFoo and 2 Chainz, more than a few female derrieres, and… Wait, is that Neal from Freaks and Geeks?

That is in fact Samm Levine as the lead scientist handling research on ladies’ behinds. “The truth of the matter is that anyone who knows me in my personal life knows that finding the perfect booty is something I’m deeply concerned with and have been for years,” Levine tells EW. “I actually run a lab out of my basement. Everyone there is a volunteer, they come on their own volition. When they asked if they could shoot the music video there, I had no problem with it. It was really more of a documentary than anything else.”

In reality, the seeds of Levine’s starring role in “Drop Girl” were sewn several years ago on a very different set of projects: “A number of years ago, I did some appearances on Yo Gabba Gabba and The Aquabats! Super Show!, and a very nice young man named Will Kendrick, who directed the Ice Cube video, worked on those programs in a creative capacity,” Levine explains. “We never met while I was working on those, but he knew who I was and reached out to me. He said we were looking for our lead researcher, and he thought of me. So I happened to be free that afternoon, and I said I would love to come do a goofy butt-related video with Ice Cube, 2 Chainz and RedFoo.”

Taping Levine’s bits took about a day, and though there was no formal script, he says Kendrick had a clear idea of what he was shooting for and how the clip would end up looking once it was completed. But that still left room for improvised contributions. “I’m proud to say, there was one part of the video that was a total ad-lib on my part,” he says. “They had me holding a calculator and staring at a girl’s ass, and I said, ‘Well, I have to spell out “boobies” on this thing.’ It would be against the law if I didn’t at this point, right?”

This was not Levine’s first appearance in a music video, but he’s hoping that this could be a new dimension in his career, which has included roles in Inglorious Basterds and on NBC’s Do No Harm, as well as his standing gig as the co-host of the podcast Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show. “I’ve been very fortunate over the years to be friends with actual cool people who have opened my ears and my eyes to really great hip-hop, and if this is my ticket into that world, then so be it,” he says. “Let the rest of the hip-hop community know I am available, and I have previous booty experience.”