Has it really taken this long for rapper/actor/Renaissance man Ice Cube to work with the Muppets? I mean, with his oversized personality and devilish, mile-wide grin, one would have thought he’d collaborated with Jim Henson’s felt-and-foam brainchildren years ago. But unless one counts the unofficial (and decidedly not safe for work) “Ghetto Bird” mashup video (in which Big Bird sounds off on pigs, Nazis, and rocket launchers), Cube has apparently never paid a visit to Sesame Street. Until now that is! Fortunately, Ice Cube makes up for lost time in the following video, clearly relishing his role as educator as he teaches young Elmo the true meaning of the word “astounding.”

And the quote of the day must surely be, “Wow! Mr. Ice Cube just changed himself into an actual ice cube!” And one complete with mustache, goatee, and attitude, Elmo. Genius. You know what else is astounding? Sesame Street‘s awesomeness as of late in recruiting of some of our favorite stars to expand the vocabulary of young people. Here’s Aziz Ansari, for example, teaching Grover what “ridiculous” means — with the aid of stove pipe hats and chicken suits…

And here’s our girl Mindy Kaling introducing Elmo to the splendor of “enthusiastic” with an impromptu dance party, complete with chickens (cuz chickens make everything better)…

But the true mic drop comes when Kat Dennings “accidentally” drops and destroys the word of the day with Abby. Fortunately that word is “repair.” Dennings’ reading of “So who do I call to repair a word?!” is all kinds of adorable. One half expects Thor to appear in a flash of lightning to set things right…

Image: Sesame Street