Language has always been a powerful tool, but more so in 2017, where once innocuous words and phrases have been elevated into rallying cries and twisted into dog-whistle insults by opposing ideologies and groups. No one can afford to be apolitical now, even in the literal arena of battle rap where politics apparently don't matter. Battle rap is about wordplay and crude jokes, most of which play into rap's culture of toxic masculinity by finding creative ways to cruelly demean the opponent. It's all understood as part of the competition, but those words still have the capacity to harm, and bringing the niche but dedicated community of battle rap into the boiling cauldron of the present is what Joseph Kahn's film Bodied seeks to do.

"When I really got into battle rap," says Larsen, "I thought it was perfect because it's just about the lyrics. I haven't struggled, I'm a middle-class white guy. I don't have an interesting perspective to bring to the table. But in battle rap that doesn't matter because you're just rapping about the guy right in front of you." Larsen takes great pains to say that he uses harmful words in the name of competition and that they're thusly not offensive because, as he says later, rap battles are paradoxically a safe space for being offensive. That take is certainly debatable, specifically in current times, and it's one we had a conversation about. Read on for the full interview with Kid Twist about Eminem's undying legacy, where battle rap draws the line, and if there any bars he regrets rapping. Also stay tuned for video of our talk.

Bodied was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, acting as something of a hometown triumph for Larsen and his first published script. "The crazy true story behind this movie is it started from a DM on Twitter," recalls Larsen, "[Joseph Kahn] saw a battle where someone said I was a writer as a line of attack and he was like 'Oh, I'm looking for a writer, let me holler at Kid Twist.'" The two worked on an unusually tight schedule and managed to land Eminem's support thanks to Kahn's prior video work with Em, along with starring roles and cameos from battle rap luminaries like Dumbfoundead and Loaded Lux. Larsen drew from some of his own experiences coming up in Toronto's then-DYI rap scene ("Shout out to HipHopCanada.com , that's how everything got organized back then"). His first battle was in 2005 against Prolific , an event that also got Larsen introduced to future KOTD founder Organik. Larsen ended up winning the very first KOTD championship in 2008, and he's a recognized face in battle rap internationally.

Produced by the notably battle rap-adjacent Eminem, the movie seems to initially be a battle rap sports narrative about a white college-going bookworm discovering his hidden talent at inventing punchlines. It eventually reveals itself to be a pitch-black satire about the Trump-era world, catching cultural dilettantes, trendy surface-level activism, and the all-consuming might of social media callout culture in its wide, tangled net. The script was penned by Alex Larsen, better known as Torontonian battle rap veteran Kid Twist. Larsen has been a prominent fixture in the now OVO-affiliated King of the Dot—Toronto's best-known battle rap league—and his knack for sharpening pop culture references into needles shows in the film's quick-witted and shockingly topical dialogue. "If you're gonna make a battle rap movie you can't take forever about it," says the 31-year-old Larsen in front of Toronto's Scotiabank Theatre, "because then the lines are gonna be irrelevant by the time the movie comes out."

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Noisey: Did you meet Eminem?

Alex Larsen a.k.a. Kid Twist: I have not. I hope to. We have a movie together, so…

Are you a fan?

Of course I'm a fan. He's considered by many, myself included, to be the greatest technical rapper of all time. There's absolutely nobody who can do what he does. I was 13 when "My Name Is" came out. A lot of people will try to cover up this up, a lot of white rappers will not admit to it but I'm not afraid to admit it: Eminem got me into rap music. I did not listen to rap music before Eminem. I am part of the Eminem generation, of the explosion of white rappers that happened after he came out. I wouldn't be here in many ways if Eminem was not who he was.

When you first got into rap, did you know that you immediately wanted to do battle rap?

So I started rapping in high school as a joke with my friends. It's something we get into in the movie a little bit, how white people get involved with rap culture ironically at first because they're afraid to not be ironic about it. I just took it more seriously and I started getting deeper and deeper into it. All my friends stopped rapping so I was the one rapper left.

When did you first bomb a match?

So, this was maybe a month and a half after my first match. I'm gassed. I've drunk my own Kool-Aid, I'm like "I'm fucking great at this." I drove to Ottawa for this battle. This was how it was in the early days in Canada. There wasn't events happening in Toronto all the time, there wasn't King of the Dot, so you had to drive yourself around the country if you wanted to go battle. I am so glad that no video footage exists of this. There was no one in the venue, like, 20 people there, so it was bad from the beginning. I get up on stage. First round, my opponent doesn't even show up so I get waved through [laughs]. Second round is against the battle champ of Ottawa: S-Croll. Shout out to S-Croll, he's actually a really good guy, I've met him a few times since. I come out, I think I have some good lyrics but they're playing weird beats, the sound's all wrong, no one can hear what I'm saying. And then he just gets on—I have no swagger, I'm just standing there with my mic—he comes up and he just murders me. The only line he said that I remember was "you wear women's jeans and look like you should join the swimming team." That's a tight rhyme. Off stage presence alone he killed me, and I walked off in shame. I sleep, wake up, get breakfast and leave Ottawa forever. Seriously, I haven't been back to Ottawa since then. [laughs]

How much of the screenplay for Bodied draws on experiences like that from your own life?

A lot of it does. I think people are gonna read this movie as more autobiographical than it is because of the similarities between me and the main character but it really is drawing from what I've seen in the battle world. There's a lot of easter eggs for battle fans, they'll know exactly what I'm referencing at specific parts of the movie. It's not so much about me as it is the scene as a whole, but seen through my perspective. I hope I wasn't that much of a white kid growing up [as the film's main character Adam] but it was pretty close.