Neil DeGrasse Tyson and B.O.B debate the flat earth theory in the silliest rap beef of all time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and B.o.B. Debate Flat Earth Theory in the Silliest Rap Beef of All Time

Neil deGrasse Tyson and B.o.B. Debate Flat Earth Theory in the Silliest Rap Beef of All Time

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Brow Beat
Slate's Culture Blog
Jan. 26 2016 10:05 PM

Neil deGrasse Tyson and B.o.B. Debating Flat Earth Theory Is the Silliest Rap Beef of All Time

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B.o.B. wants you to open your mind, man.

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

On Monday, just a few hours after the sun began to shine on the North American continent of the spherical body known as Earth, rapper B.o.B. got something off his chest. The artist—who’s wisely noted that airplanes in the night sky can, from certain angles, seem like shooting stars—had a secret to share: The Earth is flat.

B.o.B tweeted much evidence to this point—all of it entertaining, all of it unpersuasive—and it wasn’t long before our avuncular corrector-in-chief, Neil deGrasse Tyson, entered the ring with some hard-hitting facts, tossing out stats about curvature and latitude before ending with a well-placed jab about B.o.B’s medieval reasoning.

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So far, so science. But Tuesday morning, B.o.B. released a diss track in response, which is when this unlikely meeting of minds became the weirdest, tamest, and most comical rap battle of all time. Behold, “Flatline”:

The song starts strong, hitting some good, solid points (“Use your common sense/ Why is NASA part of the Department of Defense?”) before taking an unfortunate left turn into Holocaust denial. But anyway! Because we need as many science-based bars as possible, Tyson’s rapping nephew went ahead and made a Drake-inspired rebuttal, “Flat to Fact”: 

Game, set, match. For the sake of fairness: 

Sharan Shetty is on the editorial staff of the New Yorker. You can follow him on Twitter