What do you do when you’re Ariana Grande, and it’s time to remix your successful song about a sultry sex position? Call up Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat, of course. This terrific trio of tantalizing talent teamed up for “34+35 (Remix),” a song whose meaning becomes clear once you do the math. And even though we already loved the original version of the song, this new remix takes it to another level!
Especially because Doja Cat takes aim at Tekashi 6ix9ine while referencing the song’s mathematical title. During her verse, she sings, “Add up the numbers or get behind that, Play and rewind that, listen, you’ll find that, I want that 69 without Tekashi, And I want your body and I make it obvious”. Yeah, she just did that. This shade, of course, comes eight months after they first started feuding over who deserved the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts, according to Complex.
Want to hear the whole song? Listen below!
Megan and Doja are no strangers to putting out explicit tracks. Hot Girl Meg famously teamed with Cardi B for “WAP,” the biggest sex jam of 2020 (and one that reached No. 24 on Billboard Hot 100 for the year.) Doja released “Juicy,” both the original and the remix with Tyga, in 2019, and teamed with Gucci Mane for “Like That” in 2020. It makes sense, then, for these two to team up with Ariana for the remix.
Released on Oct. 30, 2020, as a single, “34+35” peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 while climaxing at No. 2 on the Rolling Stone Top 100. The accompanying music video depicts Ariana leading a lab crew in the development of an artificial lifeform. The video references Metropolis before ending on an Austin Powers note. Overall, the song received mostly positive reviews. “Few artists working today could release an explicit sex track that sounds this luxurious and ornately detailed,” wrote Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz. “The result is unapologetic and dizzyingly fun, with Grande shrugging off the need for euphemism and rightfully confident in her approach.”
tonight 🤍 @dojacat @theestallion https://t.co/ubF40jXQqC pic.twitter.com/KFvErtw1ou
— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) January 14, 2021
“I just think it’s ridiculous,” Ariana said when discussing the song on an October 2020 episode of The Zach Sang Show. “And so funny and stupid. It’s absolutely absurd. It was just a fun thing. We heard the strings that sounded so, like Disney and orchestral and full and pure. And I was just like, ‘Yo, what is the dirtiest possible, most opposing lyric that we could write to this.’ … [co-writer Scott Nicholson] wrote the ‘gimme them babies’ line, which is my favorite thing in the world… I was like, what comes after, ‘you might think I’m crazy / the way I’ve been cravin’ / I put it quite plainly,’ and Scott was like, ‘just gimme them babies!’ … It came up as a total joke, then, I fell in love with it.”
“The thing about this song, that has been my fear since the beginning, is that it would distract from the vulnerability and the sweetness that is the rest of the album [Positions],” said Ariana. Positions, according to Ariana, is a “very loving…very honest…reflection on parts of my life,” but there’s plenty of room for a track like “34+35” in her discography. “It’s just a fun song, and it deserves a home on the album for sure. I think that everything I do has a little bit of humor, and the people know that I’m not really sitting here ’til dawn. I’ve been very nervous about this one, but I do love it, and sonically it’s one of my favorite things we’ve ever done.”
The “34+35 (Remix)” is out now.