Florida Georgia Line will hit the stage tonight for a performance during the Academy of Country Music Awards. While we’re thinking they’ll play their monster hit “Cruise,” we can’t help but wonder if Nelly will make a special surprise appearance. The duo recently released a new version of “Cruise” which features Nelly, and the band explained to Radio.com how the collaboration came about.
“We had some pop stations that were wanting a different version of ‘Cruise’ that we could send out and he’s a labelmate,” Brian Kelley explained. “We heard he was a fan of what we were doing and the song. We knew he wanted to do it and literally a day or two later we had the track and we cranked it up on the bus.”
Florida Georgia Line were blown away by Nelly’s version, and Tyler Hubbard said getting the track was like Christmas morning.
“I literally think that whole weekend we probably listened to it a couple hundred times,” Kelley admitted. “We’re huge fans of him. I don’t think we could have picked anybody better. It fits what we’re doing, it fits what he’s doing. He’s a country boy at heart. We’re thankful that he put his amazing talent on our song.”
While Florida Georgia Line hasn’t met Nelly yet, they look forward to seeing him in Vegas this weekend where they’ll be filming Tim McGraw’s Superstar Summer Night TV special together on Monday (April 8).
“I think we’re going to hang out in Vegas for the ACM Awards. Looking forward to that. We haven’t really got to hang out in the studio and work together directly, just over the Internet,” Hubbard said.
So will Nelly be joining Florida Georgia Line tonight during their ACM performance?
“You never know, you never can tell,” Hubbard said with a sly smile.
Tune in to the 48th ACM Awards live tonight on CBS.
