Kid Rock Says Eminem's 2017 BET Freestyle Tested Their Friendship. Here Is Exactly What He Said.

For weeks, Kid Rock's line on Eminem has been that politics never came between them. In his newest interview, he admits there was one moment when it nearly did.

Every time Kid Rock has talked about Eminem since "Halfway 2 Jesus" was announced, the story has been the same: two Detroit kids, friends for nearly 40 years, who agreed long ago not to let politics divide them. He told Lara Trump that the two of them made a pact years ago. He told Billboard he never wanted to drag Eminem into his political world. And when Eminem finally answered the backlash himself, he used the same framing: "Not about choosing sides, just choosing to make music with my old friend."

On Wednesday, October 21, Kid Rock added a crack to that picture. In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, published that morning, he named the one moment he says actually tested the friendship.

What Kid Rock said

Asked about friendships strained by politics, Kid Rock went straight to Eminem's anti-Trump freestyle from the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards:

Kid Rock: "There's been moments when, yeah, friendships have been tested. With Eminem, it would probably be, you know, when he did the thing at the BET Awards, where he's just going hard in the paint against Trump."

He did not say the two fell out, stopped talking, or argued about it. What he described is how he came to terms with it:

Kid Rock: "But you know what I mean? At the end of the day, I looked at it like, man, that's his truth. That's how he feels."

And he explained why it stung in the first place, without walking back his loyalty to either man:

Kid Rock: "I genuinely don't like people talking about my friends in a bad way, and I'm very quick to defend them, family and friends. But when you're in the political arena, that's a whole different ballgame."

Fox News also cut that section of the interview into its own clip, titled "Kid Rock admits Eminem criticizing Trump tested their friendship." You can watch it on Fox News here.

Why this is the first real admission

Up to now, Kid Rock's public version of the friendship has been almost frictionless. The album foreword says the two "differ politically and on other things, but we've stayed friends through it all." The Lara Trump interview was about a pact that held. The Billboard interview was about laughing off the things they disagree on. This is the first time he has put a specific moment on the record and said it was hard.

The moment itself is no small thing. Eminem's freestyle, which aired during the BET Hip Hop Awards in October 2017, was a full a cappella attack on Trump, and it ended with Eminem telling any fan who supported Trump that they had to pick between the two of them. Kid Rock was, and still is, one of Trump's most visible supporters in music. Eminem's 2026 statement about "not choosing sides" reads very differently once you remember that he is the one who drew that line nine years ago, and that his friend was standing on the other side of it.

Eminem has not responded to the new interview, and nothing in his October 17 post addresses the BET freestyle directly:

Eminem's October 17 post, still his only public comment on the collaboration.

The rest of the interview

Most of the Fox News Digital sit-down was not about Eminem. Kid Rock said his support for Trump "canceled all" the corporate deals coming his way and ended his invitations to late-night shows, naming his friends Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, and said he does not care. He also credited Erika Kirk's public forgiveness of her husband's accused killer, at Charlie Kirk's memorial, with deepening the faith behind "Halfway 2 Jesus."

The album, out since October 17, is where the Eminem story lives. His verse on "Heal My Faith" addresses this exact divide, and Kid Rock has said it covers their whole history, from the Oakwood Apartments days to Kid Rock showing up for Eminem when he was nobody. That song exists because Eminem himself asked to swap off "7 Sins" and back onto the track Kid Rock first pitched him.

What we could not verify

The quotes above come from Fox News Digital's written report of the interview. We could not independently transcribe the video clip, so we are presenting the wording as Fox published it. Kid Rock said "the BET Awards"; the freestyle actually aired on the BET Hip Hop Awards, which is how Fox described it too. And Kid Rock gave no detail about whether he and Eminem ever talked about the freestyle privately at the time, so we are not going to guess.

What is on the record now is simple: the friendship both men keep pointing to as proof politics can be survived did, by Kid Rock's own account, get tested once. It held anyway.

Header image: Kid Rock speaking to Fox News Digital (video frame). Credit: Fox News Digital.