Talk about your crossover artists! Matisyahu, born Matthew Miller, has been taking the reggae world by storm–which might not be so unusual, except for the fact that he’s a Hasidic Jew who sings/raps about the Jewish experience. Check out the lyric to his hit “King Without a Crown”: “Torah food for my brain let it rain ‘til I drown, Thunder! Let the blessings come down!”

Described as combining the sounds of “Bob Marley and Shlomo Carlebach,” Matisyahu has been enjoying heavy rotation on both MTV2 (MTV’s alternative brother) and MTVu (MTV’s college-going brother) for the past few months. But, last night Matisyahu made it to the big leagues and was the featured artist on the “10 Spot Drop.”

For those of you unfamiliar with “The Drop,” several of the artist’s songs and/or videos are featured as 5-10 second “bumps,” which lead into or out of the main program. In this case that main program was “Real World Austin: The S@#t They Should Have Shown,” which provided a truly surreal experience for the viewer.

Wedged between scenes the “Real World” producers once thought inappropriate to show– Rachel peeing in her bed while drunk, Melinda running around naked buck-nekked, and Wes being attacked by Johanna while he was on the toilet–were fruit-stripe gum, rasta colored, animated snippets of Matisyahu singing, rapping, and talking about Judaism and Israel. Perhaps the bizarre nature of the evening is best illustrated by the following juxtaposition: A Matisyahu bump, wherein we see him in full Hasidic garb, is followed by an ad for “The Gauntlet,” in which one girl starts screaming about how she “manhandled on the island of Tabago.”

Matisyahu’s next album is due in stores at the end of January.