We almost had a Tay Zonday - Gilbert Arenas collaboration and it would have made the internet collapse into a black hole

In the year 2007, two things dominated the internet:

1. Gilbert Arenas' blog on NBA.com.
2. "Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday. For those of you who forgot, or aren't old enough to remember the song, here you go.

If you can't understand how that became a viral phenomenon, remember the internet was a very, very different place in 2007. Digg was more popular than Reddit, Myspace was still relevant, and Twitter was just a place where people could check in on Ashton Kutcher.

But we're getting off track. Why are we talking about Gilbert Arenas and Tay Zonday? Well, Dave McMenamin, a Cavs beatwriter for ESPN recently hosted an AMA where a user asked him about his time editing Gilbert Arenas' blog, back when he worked at NBA.com. He brought up an interesting story about a video they tried to make, but couldn't because of Tay Zonday:

andrewjackSHUN on Reddit: I loved your Blog with Gilbert Arenas. What are some cool/ funny things that happened during the process ?

Dave McMenamin: Thank you. It was a wild time looking back at it. You never know just what will become viral and somehow that blog managed to have that popularity for about two years straight. Here's a funny story from doing it. Remember that song "Chocolate Rain" that was another mini internet sensation around that time? Gilbert and I had the idea to reach out Tay Zonday to do a song about Gilbert's blog. We figured it would be like two internet celebrities joining forces to become an internet All-star team. Tay didn't quite see it that way. His people quoted us something like $10,000 to make it happen. And sadly, we never got a Agent Zero song.

Now I know what you're probably thinking: Where on earth would they get the idea to have Tay Zonday sing a song about Gilbert Arenas? Maybe because of this, but it's hard to say. But also, why would Tay Zonday be such a jerk about trying to cash in on a video with Gilbert Arenas? Well, another Redditor chipped in with an explanation that makes some sense:

This would have been magical to see but to play devil's advocate, as someone who has worked with Tay more than a few times, he suffers from some bad social anxiety. He also is very particular about his image remaining squeaky clean, like a modern day Sinbad, which I think played a part in it.

So I guess there's no reason to be upset about what could have been if that's truly the case. It's just one of those dreams that was never meant to be a reality. Instead, we'll just have to settle for the NSFW song Chris Gethard sang about Gilbert Arenas in 2008.