Pete Davidson Used Rod Stewart CDs to Hide Eminem & 50 Cent Albums as a Kid

Long before he was hosting Netflix specials, Pete Davidson was just a Staten Island kid trying to bump explicit hip-hop under his mother’s radar. In the early 2000s, when Parental Advisory stickers meant immediate confiscation at home, spinning the latest Shady or G-Unit releases required pure tactical ingenuity. Speaking with Natasha Bedingfield on Netflix, the comedian broke down the elaborate DIY operation he ran just to keep Slim Shady in his CD player.

To pull off the scheme, Davidson relied on a classic rock decoy to mask his true musical taste from his mom. “I loved Eminem growing up and I had to hide it,” Davidson revealed. “So what I would do was, I bought Rod Stewart album and I photocopied the front of the CD with computer paper and I made a sticker and I put the sticker over The Eminem Show and then I put The Eminem Show CD in the Rod Stewart case.”

The fake collection quickly multiplied as his rap intake grew, transforming his bedroom setup into what looked like a dedicated homage to a 1970s crooner. “I did that for all the Eminem and 50 Cent albums and I had like ten Rod Stewart albums and my mom just thought I loved Rod Stewart,” he shared, capturing the hilarity of hiding Get Rich or Die Tryin’ behind a wall of soft rock.

Davidson’s teenage hustle speaks to the lengths early-2000s rap fans had to go through to keep the genre’s defining records in rotation. Before streaming made music private and instant, sliding hip-hop’s biggest albums past strict parents took real creativity—even if it meant convincing your family you were Rod Stewart’s biggest fan.

50 Cent Eminem