Eminem Introduces Obama at Detroit Kamala Harris Rally

By Danielle Cohen, a writer for the Cut who covers pop-culture news and entertainment.  Previously, she wrote about wellness, fitness, and their intersection with culture at GQ.

I don’t know how stressed you’re feeling about the looming election, but one guy who is still in an amazing mood is Barack Obama. On Tuesday, the former president rolled up to a Harris-Walz rally in Detroit to deliver a speech that opened with a confident a cappella performance of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”

To be fair, Obama was sort of teed up to do this — he was introduced by Eminem himself and walked out to the actual track of “Lose Yourself.” “I have done a lot of rallies,” he began when he made it to the podium, looking extremely at ease, “so I don’t usually get nervous. But I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem. Now, I noticed my palms are sweaty —” he paused to let the crowd figure out what he was about to do — “knees weak, arms are heavy … vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.”

At this point, Obama had gathered the passion of 1,000 college ciphers to deliver a few more lines: “I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs, but I keep on forgetting —” then he stopped to sing a little bit of the song’s beat before joking, “I thought Eminem was going to be performing and I was going to jump out. Love me some Eminem.” I think he and the entire crowd would have genuinely loved that entrance.

Clearly feeling the Slim Shady spirit, Obama also seemed to enjoy delivering a bunch of zingers aimed at his favorite roastee, Donald Trump, during the rest of his speech. “I heard there was another rally here on Friday night, but it was a little smaller than this one,” he said, referring to a Trump gathering a few days prior during which Trump claimed Obama had been looking “exhausted.” Obama dragged everything from Trump’s merch (“He says it’s made in Switzerland, but who really knows”) to his speeches (“Word salad; you don’t know what the heck he’s saying”) to the fact that he described the January 6 insurrection as “a day of love. Made it sound like Woodstock. Made it sound like Coachella.”

He also went in on the recent Philadelphia town hall where Trump was filmed silently nodding to music for half an hour earlier this month. “He’s just up there swaying to ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘Y.M.C.A.,’” Obama riffed. “Now, I will say our playlist might be better,” he said, prompting cheers. “I’d have ‘Lose Yourself’ on there.” He sure would! Do you think he’d perform it himself, too?