We all got a good laugh at Pete Davidson’s recent Christmas parody of Eminem’s iconic obsessed fan anthem “Stan” on Saturday Night Live. Even the reclusive rapper seemed to give it a co-sign by appearing as himself in the send-up of his 2000 track in which Davidson played Santa-fixated “Stu,” who peppers St. Nick with a barrage of letters in search of an elusive PS5.
In a chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Em said that when he first got the lyric sheet for Davidson’s sketch and read it on paper he wasn’t sure it was going to land. “I remember they sent me the lyrics to it and I was reading them on paper and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if this is going to be that good,’” he told Lowe. “And then the weight, when he said it, I was like, ‘Holy s–t.’ He said it so good that he sold every single thing. You can’t… First of all, everybody’s raps look terrible on paper, right? Because you don’t necessarily know, unless you’re a rapper yourself… You don’t necessarily know where… Even if you are, you don’t know where they’re going to hit the beat at, what pocket they’re going to choose. Yeah. And he was in a ill pocket. He was like, he was kind of going and he’d go a little faster and then he kind of slowed down so you could catch what he just said.”
Lowe said he appreciated that Mathers was reacting the same way a lot of the viewers at home were, peeking at Davidson through their fingers and hoping he didn’t screw up his comedic take on the beloved song that has become an avatar for superfan attention. “But he kept your intensity, that’s the thing,” Lowe said.
“Yeah. His delivery was for sure really on point because it was not what I expected when I saw it,” said Em. “I was like, ‘Man, this is actually really good.’ The whole thing was great.” In the same Wednesday (Dec. 30) interview, the rapper also broke down the bricks in his hip-hop foundation, showing off his impressive wall of tapes and breaking down which MCs are his personal favorites.
Watch Eminem discuss the SNL parody below (at the 9:45 mark).
