You may remember that during summer 2015, a video featuring Shia LaBeouf made the rounds, in which the shirtless actor/artist/whathaveyou spat off a freestyle rap a capella to a small group of people in what looked like a park. It was a bizarre clip that seemed to come completely out of nowhere, but now, it provides context for the latest viral clip starring LeBeouf.
He was a guest on the popular Shade 45/Sirius XM radio show Sway In The Morning today, and one of the program’s recurring segments is called 5 Fingers of Death, in which a rapper is given five different instrumental hip-hop tracks without break and tested to see how capable a freestyler they are. LaBeouf took the challenge, and although his flow isn’t always the smoothest, his freestyle had some solid lines and was pretty impressive considering he’s not a rapper by trade, and this is a challenge usually reserved for the professionals.
After discussing some of his favorite rappers, including Tupac, Biggie Smalls, and Missy Elliott, he got into it, displaying some self-awareness about his status as an unusual and attention-grabbing figure: “Get ready, get set, this a meme. This is wild, this a childhood dream.” He also seemingly took a shot a Drake and more broadly, at rappers who don’t write all their own lyrics: “It’s dumb now, it’s trash rapping in October / who wrote what for who, it’s all below par / Substandard, used to be a litmus / If you didn’t write your own shit, you got dismissed.”
Meanwhile, we’re trying to imagine what it’d be like if a fan of Even Stevens somehow managed to not hear about LeBeouf since that show went off the air in 2003, and this is what they came back to.
Featured image: SwaysUniverse
