Metro Detroiter's long-running show on Eminem's Shade 45 was abruptly halted earlier this month.
Adam GrahamThe Detroit News
Rude Jude's last show on SiriusXM aired on Nov. 16.
The long-running host of "The All Out Show" on Eminem's Shade 45 was contacted by SiriusXM personnel after the show and was told his contract would not be renewed. He had been with the station since its launch in Oct. 2004.
"I straight up got fired by a dude who I never met in person," Jude told The News on Monday. "He was some flunky from another place that they bought, and he couldn't even fire me from a landline. The call kept breaking up, he had to call me back to fire me properly. I was like, 'Are you kidding me?'"
They weren't kidding. That was the unceremonious end of "The All Out Show," Jude Angelini's anything goes afternoon radio show, where topics ranged from news to politics to relationships, all filtered through the Pontiac native's uncensored thoughts. Angelini had been doing the show from his home in Metro Detroit since 2020.
He was not shocked by the way things ended.
"I knew I wasn't a fit for the channel anymore," says Jude, who says his brand of speaking his mind — "old-school truth," he calls it — fell out of vogue with the company, as well as with the world at large. "I was in an impossible situation."
Jude's removal from the airwaves caused a flood of reaction from listeners, who left hundreds of comments on SiriusXM's social channels, many posting pictures of their service cancelations on X. The response took Jude by surprise. "I didn't think anyone liked me," he says.
"Jude will always be family," a Shady Records representative told The News on Monday. "He was at the station for almost 20 years and was a major part of its personality. We wish him nothing but the best."
Jude had been with Shade 45 since the beginning of the station, and has been at Sirius even longer than Howard Stern, whose morning show at the satellite radio company didn't start until January 2006.
Jude was once a guest on Stern's show, in 2015. He was there to talk up "Hyena," his first book, which he followed with "Hummingbird" and "Fin," deeply personal tales of his exploits with drugs, sex and growing up dirt poor. As a child, he slept in a closet.
But he's always had a gift for gab. Jude first became known for his outlandish appearances on "The Jenny Jones Show" in the 1990s, where his quick wit and lacerating roasts of guests gave him the nickname "Rude Jude" and made him a favorite of both the show's producers, who kept bringing him back and made him a series regular, as well as viewers. Among those viewers was Eminem, who shouted out Jude in "Drug Ballad," a song from his 2000 album "The Marshall Mathers LP."
The Eminem connection stuck, and Jude was brought on to host the afternoon program on Em's Sirius station when Shade 45 launched in Oct. 2004. He'd been there ever since, talking to guests ranging from celebrities to medical professionals to p*rn stars in his unapologetic style and a voice that sounds like an extra gravelly Redd Foxx. His show aired from 4-7 p.m. on weekdays; music now airs in its spot.
Jude, 46, says the show suffered from cutbacks in recent years and was difficult to do from Metro Detroit, which has been his home base since he moved back home following the death of his father in September 2020. The show was down to just two other members, and Jude says the work environment became increasingly strained over time. "It's hard to run your vision when the people on the other side that have to execute it don't like your vision, you know?"
Jude says he was beginning to see the writing on the wall but was hoping to make it to his 20 year anniversary at the station before his plug was pulled.
Looking to the future, he hopes to keep talking, possibly starting a Patreon to broadcast on anything from news to advice to his love of cooking. "I want to do a bunch of different shows," he says, and on his own platform, "nobody can really tell me what I can say and what I can't say."
But as he looks back at his time on the air, Jude says he has nothing but gratitude for his employers and his experiences doing the show.
"I feel so grateful man," he says. "I got to meet my heroes. I got to talk to listeners, I've got friends who are listeners. I grew up. I learned so much, man. It gave me an opportunity to help out my family. I got an opportunity, I'd never done no s--- like that, I was just making it up as I went along and trying to figure things out. So I'm f------ grateful," he says.
"I've been a lot of peoples' friend, riding shotgun with them for the last 20 years. Their crazy homie, their drunk uncle, whatever. I've been that dude."
agraham@detroitnews.com
