Mike Gordon, the LA-based musician better known as Mk.gee, has had a huge come-up this year. His woozy, amorphous debut album Two Star & The Dream Police is one of our favorites of the year thus far, and he’s making unlikely fans like Eric Clapton. In a surprising new plot twist, we learn today that Mk.gee is in the lab with pop megastar and new dad Justin Bieber.

In a New York Times Mk.gee profile today, writer Joe Coscarelli reveals that Mk.gee has been writing and recording music with Justin Bieber. Mk.gee says, “He’s searching… Anything that comes out of his mouth: That’s pop music. You can really do pretty wild stuff behind that, just because it represents something.”

Mk.gee says that he’s not trying to make pop music, necessarily, but that he’s after “the promise of pop music… Experimentalism has no meaning unless it’s done on the grandest scale. I just don’t want to join somebody else’s citadel. I want to build my own thing, my own castle with my friends, because that’s what needed. And if people want to come, they can come.”

In the piece, Mk.gee refers to Two Star & The Dream Police as “the best record ever.” He continues: “Nobody in alternative music is allowed to be confident and be like, No, this is the best thing in the world. If you make alternative music, you’re supposed to do this, and if you make pop music, you’re supposed to be like this.”

The Times piece includes laudatory quotes from Clairo and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, both friends of Mk.gee. Vernon says, “Mike is just a songbook. Not only does he hear all the music that I hear, but he knows how to play it. There’s moments where I’m like, ‘Am I listening to Bonnie Raitt’s grandson? Or Stevie Winwood’s?'”

Fans on Mk.gee’s Reddit were speculating about a possible Mk.gee/Bieber collaboration months ago, and there’s a TikTok video of Bieber enjoying “Many Times,” a track that Mk.gee co-produced and co-wrote with his regular collaborator Dijon, at a launch party. In the past, Mk.gee has worked with pop-leaning artists like Omar Apollo and Bieber collaborator the Kid Laroi. You can read the full Times profile here.