SNL: Pete Davidson’s Eminem & Morpheus Explain NFTs

Last night, Saturday Night Live returned from a month-long break and one of the more bizarre sketches of the night found Pete Davidson’s Eminem kicking off a rap song meant to explain NFTs. Season 46, episode 15 of SNL had a wealth of current events and buzzy news bits to mind for comedy after a month off and, as always, they tackled some topical trends, most notably in a rap parody that featured a number of Saturday Night Live actors in a strange classroom setting.

NFTs have been all over the news lately and, like many things having to do with cryptocurrency, are a hard concept to explain to anyone who isn’t intimately involved in the world of crypto and blockchain. Standing for “non-fungible tokens,” NFTs are a concept that has popped up in the art world in the past few months, and the entire concept is abstract, complex, and more than a little ridiculous. The basic concept, however, boils down to using NFTs as a kind of currency to buy digital art that doesn’t exist anywhere else. If that still doesn’t make it clear, that’s exactly what last night’s Saturday Night Live sketch mocked.

The sketch found Kate McKinnon’s Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen giving a presentation to a college class. The professor (Kyle Mooney) makes the mistake of opening up the floor for questions and that’s when Pete Davidson’s Eminem breaks into a rap asking about NFTs to the tune of “Without Me,” complete with being dressed in a Robin costume just like Eminem in the original video. As Yellen struggles to explain what they are, Morpheus from The Matrix (Chris Redd) raises his hand to explain with his own rap verse, which is also absolute nonsense. Finally, the school janitor (Jack Harlow) walks by and Yellen asks if he can explain, at which point the janitor also drops some bars that actually make sense – sort of.

The sketch hinges on the absurdity of celebrities and artists throwing millions of dollars worth of digital art that literally anyone else can download simply to own the original, even though “original” is a relative term when it comes to digital art. Highlighting the absurdity is the nature of the rap verses themselves, which are basically nonsense that explain nothing, which is exactly how it sounds when most people try to explain what NFTs are and how they work. It helps that the rap verses are all stuffed with references to some of the most well-known celebrities and pop culture touchpoints, the contrast between the widely-known references and the ephemera of NFTs illustrating the complete abstract nature of the phenomenon. Monopoly, Rob Gronkowski, Colin Jost’s face, the Nintendo Switch, Digimon, Seinfeld, Ron Funches, Peter Griffin from Family Guy, LeBron, Chuck E. Cheese, Bam Margera, the Supreme Court, Amy Klobuchar, Adam Driver, and twerking Thanos are all referenced in the lyrics before the janitor delivers his surprisingly straightforward verse – that still doesn’t actually explain what the point of NFTs are.

It’s a bizarre sketch that feels more like a Weird Al video than anything else, but the completely random mash-up of characters and references with the out-there premise works precisely because it is such a weird topic they’re trying to explain. There’s no explanation for any of what’s happening in the sketch, which is exactly what understanding NFTs is like: They exist and it’s happening, but it’s unclear as to why. Every so often Saturday Night Liveswings for the fence with a weird sketch like this and it works – even if, after watching it, no one has a better understanding of NFTs.

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