VIDEO: JEREMIH COVERS ADELE’S “RUMOR HAS IT” FOR BILLBOARD’S ‘MASHUP MONDAYS’

Let the man stand up with a drum kit to his right, keys to his left, and a reverb-heavy guitar backing him up, and R&B hitmaker Jeremih has his way with the retro soul of Adele’s “Rumour Has It,” in this week’s Mashup Mondays.

“I know you probably haven’t heard this type of sound from my voice, so I just wanted to touch it,” Jeremih says of choosing the Adele song, which is the second single from her No. 1 latest album, “21.” “And see what I could do with it.”

Seeing what he “could do with it,” turns out to involve more than just the obvious change of hearing his tenor croon in place of her distinctive dusky-yet-feminine voice. In addition to inserting a playful interlude directly referencing both Vanilla Ice and David Bowie with Freddie Mercury, Jeremih’s take on “Rumor Has It” centered on stripping the song’s instrumentation down

“The bridge is my favorite part,” says the 23-year-old Chicagoan. “It showcased my vocals entirely, being so bare, just the keys and guitar. At first I was going to switch from keys to strings, but that was just too much.”