Former President Obama briefly “lost” himself while rapping Eminem lyrics at a rally in Detroit while campaigning for Vice President Harris in the battleground state.
The superstar rapper made brief remarks on Tuesday, offering support for the vice president and arguing she would protect freedom of speech, before introducing the former Democratic president.
“I gotta say, you know, I’ve done one a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” Obama said as the crowd cheered.
Obama then started rapping the lyrics from Eminem’s hit song “Lose Yourself” from the 2002 movie “8 Mile.”
“I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface, I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting,” the former president rapped in first person as the crowd got louder.
“I thought Eminem was gonna be performing, I was gonna jump out,” Obama later quipped.
“Love, love me some Eminem,” he said.
Obama has enjoyed Eminem’s hit song on the campaign trail before. In 2016, he was seen bopping to “Lose Yourself” in a video released by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Eminem, who endorsed Harris, has gone after Republican politicians in the past. The Detroit-native rapper has previously criticized former President Trump and led a profane chant against the then-president at a music festival in the United Kingdom in late August 2017.
Eminem also asked former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy last year to stop using his music at campaign events. Ramaswamy is a long-time fan of the rapper.
“I did not grow up in the circumstances he did, but the idea of being an underdog, people having low expectations of you, that part speaks to me,” Ramaswamy told The New York Times in an August 2023 interview.
