To his credit, Kurt Cobain actually laughed off the parody. Other people like Coolio were livid though. Al wanted to do a parody of Lose Yourself by Eminem and was told no. A lot of the artists didn’t like Al.
Eminem allowed Al to parody “Lose Yourself”. Al’s version “Couch Potato” is the first song on the Poodle Hat album. What Eminem didn’t allow though was a parody video. Al regretted that, he said it could have been one of his best videos ever. But he honored Eminem’s request.
Al even used the same video director, word is Kurt gave him the number.
Al said Cobain arranged for them to have the whole set from the original video, access to original actors, etc. not sure he ever got that degree of cooperation from anyone else.
Actually, I’ve seen and heard many times that Wierd Al is very careful to make sure people are OK with his parody. Coolio was an exception; his label said yes without checking with him.