Unexpected is actually an understatement for Eminem’s recent performance at Monday’s Oscar Awards. If it wasn’t clear enough that some members of the Dolby Theatre audience were a bit confused, people of the internet made it clear that they were downright baffled. But not without reason.

The rapper wasn’t a nominee for any motion picture music category and he was performing a song almost two decades after its release just weeks after his new album Music to Be Murdered By was released. So if he was there to amp up the entertainment factor of the award show, why didn’t he just perform one of his new tracks?

In all fairness, it makes a lot more sense with the right context. The ABC network and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were actually trying to find a way for the 2003 Oscar winner to perform his song Lose Yourself at the ceremony and they finally did.

You read that right Eminem is an Oscar-winner and people seemed to have forgotten. That’s because he wasn’t there to accept his Academy Award for Best Original Song back in 2003 so he didn’t get the chance to perform “Lose Yourself” either — a song written for the 2002 drama “8 Mile” starring the rapper.

Rob Mills of ABC explained the rationale behind Eminem’s performance to Variety.
“It’s something we’ve talked about for years,” he said.

“Because that was one of the great film anthems of all time, and anthems all together. But it’s one that he never performed on the Oscars.”