Chris Kirkpatrick was no stranger to boy band jokes, but he was not expecting Eminem to call him out by name — until he heard “Without Me” for the first time.
“We did a show in Miami, and on the way back, my phone started blowing up”, Kirkpatrick shared in “The ’90s Boy Band Boom” documentary. “People kept asking, ‘Have you heard the new Eminem song? He makes fun of you!’” At first, he figured it was just another play on NSYNC’s name — after all, “sync” rhymes with plenty of things. But when his friends insisted the rapper called him out specifically, he wasn’t convinced.
“Chris Kirkpatrick doesn’t rhyme with anything”, he reasoned — until he heard the lyric himself:
A tisket, a tasket, I’ll go tit-for-tat wit’
Anybody who’s talkin’, “This shit, that shit”
Chris Kirkpatrick, you can get your ass kicked
That’s when it clicked. “I was like, ‘Oh… yeah. I guess it rhymes with that.’”
The reference left Kirkpatrick wondering what it all meant. “Do I have beef now? Is this a thing? Man, that sucks”, he joked. But despite the jab, he says he has always been an Eminem fan.
At the time, boy bands were an easy target in pop culture, something Kirkpatrick believes led to NSYNC’s success being overlooked. “We were up for a couple of Grammys, but the one that kills me the most was losing to Steely Dan for Best Vocal Performance”, he admitted. Well, it certainly hurt more than a line from a rapper who famously did not show mercy to anyone in showbiz.
