Ever since his official debut in 1999, Eminem has been a lightning rod for controversy. He’s mellowed out a lot since then, but it appears he still has the juice to get the establishment all riled up, 23 years later. While many folks agreed with Britney Spears regarding his performance during Dr. Dre’s Super Bowl halftime show, some more conservative viewers freaked out, with one coining the term “sexual anarchy” to describe the largely sexless performance.
One, Rudy Giuliani, went on a baffling tirade against Eminem specifically for kneeling after completing his set, presumably in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 protests against police brutality. Giuliani, popping up on a conservative talk radio show, seemed to equate Eminem’s action with a (nonexistent) rise in crime in Los Angeles, and said that the NFL “made a mockery out of law enforcement.” Yeah, I don’t know what world this guy thinks he lives in either… I kid. I know he’s just shilling to his paranoia-ridden base.
And while Eminem himself has yet to respond to the bad-faith, disingenuous rant, it looks like Stephen Colbert was more than happy to take over some of that workload on last night’s episode of The Late Show, employing a soundalike — similarly to when he lampooned Nicki Minaj’s “cousin’s swollen balls” tall tale — to imagine Eminem’s frankly hilarious response to Giuliani. Set to Em’s “Lose Yourself,” the song that the rapper performed at the Super Bowl (and one of his least offensive songs ever), the remixed track takes aim at Rudy’s many (many) missteps over the past couple of years, from his Borat embarrassment to his stumping for the failed January 6 coup.
Watch “Eminem’s” response to Rudy Giuliani’s Super Bowl halftime show rant above.