When Fat Joe hit the airwaves recently as part of MTV's notorious Spring Break programming, the rapper seemed confused. "Who are these kids?" he said.
Joe -- sporting an oversized graphic T-shirt and chains of platinum bling that shone in the Cancun sun -- ogled the kids' clothes.
He questioned their slim-fitting, lime-green-and-pink polo shirts. "The tightest shirts in America," he called them. And no, he didn't mean "tight" in the slang sense.
Joe was worried.
"How can these guys get cool?" he said. "My hands seem full."
Thus, the premise was laid for "Fat Joe's All or Nothing Undercover," the show that plucked "two unsuspecting guys out of their ordinary existence," according to mtv.com, for 36 hours of Spring Break partying with Fat Joe and his Terror Squad.
The "two unsuspecting guys": fourth-year twins Curtis and Otis Ofori, Commerce and College student, respectively.
Their journey to Cancun began on the Corner, at an MTV casting call held at O'Neills.
Curtis and Otis weren't planning to try out until they ate lunch on the Corner with a friend who said they had to give it a shot.
Trying out may not have been their idea, but once the Oforis sat down with an MTV producer at O'Neills, they said they "hammed it up."
"You kind of know what [the MTV producers] want," Otis said.
As the two spoke with the bright-green-polo-clad producer about their lives at the University and what they did for fun, he said that he liked their "preppy flow." The twin thing probably didn't hurt either, they said.
"We were ourselves," Otis said. "We tried to build a rapport with the producer."
Whatever the two did, it worked, and they were soon off to Cancun, not knowing exactly what to expect.
They awoke bright and early on their first morning at the Sheraton hotel in Cancun, courtesy of MTV, and nervously awaited their first meeting with Fat Joe.
"Fat Joe got the wrong impression at first," Curtis said. "But we're big hip-hop and rap fans, even though we don't fit the mold."
Otis recalled a minor collar crisis on their first run-in with the rapper. "At first Fat Joe wasn't digging the preppy flow," he said. "He kept flipping the collars down and we'd flip them back up."
There wasn't much time to fight over flipped collars, however; there was a rigorous filming schedule to follow. By the Oforis' calculations, it took three-and-a-half hours of filming to make 22 minutes of show.
Oftentimes, days started at 9 in the morning and wouldn't stop until 3 or 4 a.m.
"During breaks we'd sit there, exhausted," Curtis said.
And, despite the crazy Cancun scene, the two didn't drink much besides Coke -- they said they couldn't have lasted through the shoot otherwise.
Although the two agreed the long hours were the toughest part of their MTV experience, the complaints ended there.
Otis summed up his favorite aspect of living the MTV life with three letters, "V.I.P."
Curtis concurred, listing the Spring Break perks reserved for Very Important People, and those being filmed for an MTV reality show: "Meeting celebrities, bypassing lines, no cover charge, unlimited drinks, close to the stage everywhere..."
During their ventures into celebrity-laden VIP locales and time spent with Fat Joe, Curtis and Otis were able to meet some of pop music and pop culture's biggest names: The Game, Trick Daddy, Mario, Nick Cannon, DJ Scribble, Viva la Bam and even Paris Hilton.
Apparently, Paris in person doesn't quite live up to tabloid legend.
"She's blond," Otis said. "She's all right."
The Oforis also had a run-in with reality TV regulars Landon and "the Miz" from MTV's "Road Rules" and "Real World" shows.
"Those guys are insane!" Curtis and Otis said simultaneously.
"They picked up a lot of girls," Otis recalled.
Fat Joe encouraged Otis and Curtis to do the same during the "Get it Bumpin'" segment of the "all or nothing" challenge. After a short clip was shown of the twins dancing with a crowd of co-eds in a Cancun club, Fat Joe reported that they passed the test.
"These dudes aren't afraid of the ladies," he said.
Ultimately, Otis and Curtis' on-air actions were tame compared to the beach bacchanal that served as the show's backdrop.
The two were well aware going into the taping that "anything you do could be caught on camera," Curtis said. "We wanted to be a good representation of our family, also the University."
Otis added: "I knew my mom would watch it."
The twins' mom did watch it, as did millions of television viewers and many of the Oforis' friends.
"People have been really receptive," Curtis said.
Otis reported that 10 to 15 friends from high school called right as the show first aired.
Curtis and Otis said they didn't catch their first television appearance because they were anxious about how they would be portrayed. Eventually, though, they watched and enjoyed the show.
"90 percent is very much accurate," Curtis said, "but they've got a story to tell."
Second-year College student Jon Ansley, Curtis' housemate, said when he first saw the show on MTV he "just couldn't believe it."
"It seemed too crazy to be true," Ansley said.
And, he notes, some parts weren't.
"I thought the plot of the show was kinda weak," he said. "Like, stretching it to how they 'couldn't swim'" in a scene where the two rode jet skis. (They've been swimming since they were kids.)
Despite certain not-so-real show moments, Curtis and Otis say they'd "do it again in a heartbeat."
As for Fat Joe, he eventually accepted the Oforis as honorary Terror Squad members and gave them a shout-out during his Cancun concert.
He even wore a collared shirt for the last shot.
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