Sacha Baron Cohen's Who Is America? has, thus far, mostly made headlines for its ingenious ability to quite easily convince inane politicians to publicly humiliate themselves. Earlier this week, for example, we all found temporary solace in the form of some fine-tuned Roy Moore mockery:
In that same episode, Cohen—playing a caricature-ishly progressive professor—joined Atlanta battle rapper Ness Lee for a faceoff. Unlike most of the segments featured on the Showtime comedy, this one was a mostly lighthearted affair that resulted in zero politicians again outing themselves as goddamn idiots.
In a new interview with Vulture, Lee shared his side of how the segment came into fruition. "A few people were involved," he said, noting that battle rapper Adam Rone Ferrone gave "somebody" his number in 2017, at which point this same "somebody" looked him up on YouTube and ultimately reached out to BullPen Battles owner John John Da Don.
Once Showtime reached out about putting together a "weird battle," Lee was told only that he would be going up against a "college professor" described as "a super-far leftist" who wanted to participate in a "life with the people he fought for for so long." Lee agreed to the battle, unaware, of course, that it was Cohen. "The day that the show premiered, [a friend] hit me back on Twitter and said, 'Yo, it was Borat that you battled!' I was like, 'What!!!!'" Lee recalled. "I thought it was cool and dope. I'm a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen."
On Twitter, Lee said the battle lasted roughly 15 minutes (he hopes they release it all) and they "had that crowd flipping," but he never caught on to the setup, thanks in large part to Cohen's ability to stay in character at all times. "It was so genuine," Lee told Vulture. "After my friend told me it was Borat, I had to really think back in my mind. This guy might be the greatest actor of all time."
Lee also gave Vulture his take on the segment's "heal the divide" approach and rated Cohen's rapping and freestyling abilities, which led to a pretty interesting assessment:
"It’s funny, a lot of people get freestyle ability and rapping ability confused. They say if somebody can’t rap, they can’t freestyle, but that’s not true. Sacha’s freestyle ability is ridiculous. I’m listening to the references he’s using. He’s referring to actual cases they had back in the day for suffrage and all sorts of other things. His words and vocabulary are ridiculous. His freestyle is actually crazy! I’m like, 'Yo, this old Jewish man is very quick on his toes.' But his rapping ability? I’m not gonna lie. It sucks. Absolutely terrible rapper. But his freestyle ability was through the roof."
Catch the full interview at Vulture.
A new Who Is America? hits the planet this Sunday on Showtime and will surely feature something worth laughing and writing about.
