The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore on Wednesday night to settle the score in one of the century’s most implausible rap feuds.
Dressed in a black muscle tee, Tyson delivered what was part diss track, part science lecture—written to inform the rapper B.o.B once and for all that the “world isn’t f—kin’ flat.” He also poked fun at the rapper’s height.
“And by the way,” he concludes. “This is called gravity.” He then dropped the mic.
All of this began, as the best feuds of this era have, on Twitter. Earlier this week, B.o.B launched into a Twitter essay arguing that the earth is in fact flat, defending his claim with screenshots of trigonometry and conspiracy theory memes. Tyson reached out to the rapper to correct him, and to gently tell him that he was “five centuries regressed in [his] reasoning.”
And so B.o.B dropped a diss track. In “Flatline,” he advises Tyson to “loosen up his vest” and “come on over here [to] try to clown.” He also gives a shout-out to David Irving, the prominent Holocaust denier, and ventures that “Stalin was way worse than Hitler.”
Tyson’s nephew is himself a rapper, and he released a track in response called “Flat to Fact,” but Tyson apparently wanted to settle this himself.
Shortly after Tyson’s appearance, B.o.B was tweeting about NASA conspiracy theories.
- Meet TIME’s Newest Class of Next Generation Leaders
- After Visiting Both Ends of the Earth, I Realized How Much Trouble We’re In
- Google Is Making It Easier to Remove Personal Info From Search
- Oil Companies Posted Huge Profits. Here’s Where The Cash Will Go (Hint: Not Climate)
- Column: We Asked Hundreds of Americans About Abortion. Their Feelings Were Complicated
- A Short History of the Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the Marcos Family
- Long-Lasting Birth Control Is Already Hard to Get. Advocates Worry It May Only Get Worse
- Who Should Be on the 2022 TIME100? Vote Now