It was one of those moments you almost have to pinch yourself to believe—Paul McCartney, a living legend, sitting there completely floored by none other than the notorious Eminem. The scene felt unreal, like two worlds colliding right in front of your eyes. McCartney, who’s seen and done it all in music, couldn’t hide his reaction as Eminem unleashed his raw fire. For a second, it was as if time stopped—the Beatle staring in awe at the rap icon, blown away by the sheer force of his presence.

Are there any figures in this world with less hip-hop cred than Paul McCartney?

He was the safe one out of The Beatles. A band who might have been one of the most forward-thinking and boundary-pushing of their time, but it is not their time any more. Today, they have all the counter-culture credibility of Wonderbread, not to mention being somehow even more white. Being the first of all of them to be knighted says a lot about how McCartney is as establishment as they come these days.

Yet, how true is that? On the one hand, this is wacky ol’ thumbs aloft we’re talking about. The guy behind The Frog Chorus and ‘Silly Love Songs’ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. The guy they wheel out at the end of big important events to lead a stadium-wide sing-song of ‘Hey Jude’. Expecting anything out of him beyond parroting the most establishment brand of establishment talking points is naive at best and outright stupid at worst.

Look a little closer, though, and you’ll find someone who has a decent amount of counter-culture cred to their name. In The Beatles, he was as onboard with their experimentation as a ship captain, and was the Fab in charge of the tape loops added to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. He wrote ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?’. Outside of The Beatles, his solo career may have had its fair share of kids’ stuff, but he’s also had moments of daring like his trip-hop duo with Youth, The Fireman.

So what happens when the guy who wrote ‘Yellow Submarine’ is confronted by the artist who, in the early 2000s, was the single most notorious man debated in pop music?

Which hip-hop star was Paul McCartney impressed by?

There was a time when Eminem felt like a genuinely corrupting influence on the world’s youth. That’s probably hilarious for a young person to read now. Marshall Mathers III seems more known for writing music to inspire weightlifters to do one more set than anything genuinely edgy, but it’s true. Eminem was a terrifying figure to parents of the late 1990s and early 2000s in a way that we can’t really imagine today. Imagine the outrage if a UK drill artist suddenly became the biggest pop star on the planet, and you’ll imagine some of the sheer panic Eminem induced in his prime.

You’d think that McCartney would be one of those adults scolding him for corrupting innocent minds with his violent and disturbing music and wailing about how much better things were back in his day. Fortunately, the opposite is true. In an interview conducted with Mojo in 2003, Macca discussed hearing Eminem’s work for the first time and being impressed, even comparing him to one of his most frequently mentioned forebears.

“I’d heard Eminem on the radio and I thought, ‘Clever. Good lyrics, good ideas’,” McCartney said, “so I just went to see 8 Mile and it’s a great little rock ’n’ roll film, like an Elvis film. I enjoyed it and I came out like when I was a kid, that feel-good thing coming out of a movie like you’re walking a bit taller.” That comparison shows something very special. Because it’s one thing to appreciate the music, but what McCartney did was something else entirely.

Paul McCartney, of all people, did what few people of his generation did when confronted with music that was genuinely new, genuinely edgy and genuinely resonating with the youth. He understood it just as he’s always done and not ever been given quite enough credit for.