It’s no surprise that Kanye West went overboard for Kim Kardashian on Valentine’s Day — but how he got celebrated saxophonist Kenny G to play “Somewhere over the Rainbow” in his house with less than 12 hours notice most definitely was.
“Really late last night I got a couple of emails, one from a publicist that knows Kanye’s manager,” Kenny G told Rolling Stone after the epic surprise. “He told me that Kanye had requested me to come to the house and serenade Kim in the morning.”
And when he was told the “I Love It” rapper planned for him to play in a room filled with single roses, he recalled thinking, ‘That actually sounds really beautiful.”
On top of being in town for an appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” Kenny said in the interview published Friday that he was also persuaded by music mogul David Foster.
“I got a text from David Foster, who told me he had heard about the request and told me I should definitely do it. I didn’t get the message until, like, 11 o’clock at night. It just happened to work out, ’cause I’m in town and I don’t live very far from where they live. So it worked out really well.”
After arriving early the musician said he met more people than he can count and had a pleasant exchange with Kanye about music as the room was getting set up.
“They were putting all of this stuff together. I did not see the room completed until literally 20 seconds before I started playing,” Kenny said.
And as for the big reveal, the musician said it couldn’t have gone over better.
“She was coming around a corner, and I got the nod from Kanye to go. And so I started to play, and when she came, she just went, “Oh my god,” and then she looked at me and was smiling and just kind of stopped,” he recalled. “She didn’t know what to do with herself for a minute. Then she got her phone out, which was awesome.”
Later during his appearance on the late-night talk show, James Corden spoofed the surprise, showing Kenny G doing a reenactment in Ray Romano’s dressing room.