With the arrival of his new album The Allegory, Royce da 5'9" has addressed the shots he took at former label mate Yelawolf. In an interview with Real 92.3, Royce shared why he felt the need to call out Yelawolf, but he didn't indicate whether there was any progress in mending their friendship. In an interview with Rob Markman for Genius, he said that Yela has since reached out, and that the purpose of calling him out on "Overcomer" was to re-establish communication.
"He was a friend of mine," Royce said at the 29:30 point of the interview. "I felt disrespected by something that transpired, and that was just the way I dealt with it. I felt like I could’ve dealt with it a few different ways. I chose not to, because I don’t want to promote negativity. I don’t want to engage in silly, public, back-and-forth beefs. And I did feel like I needed to hold him accountable."
As with his other recent interviews, Royce didn't explain what exactly happened, but he did reveal that the song opened up a dialogue. "There wasn't a communication line between us," he continued. "The window of opportunity for us to communicate closed, and it’s because he didn’t initiate it. So I just felt as friends, you would initiate that communication and give that clarification to me. But that never happened."
When the song dropped, however, that all changed. "He reached out," Royce said. "Oh yeah, after that he reached out. We didn’t speak, but he reached out after that. I don’t wish him nothing but the best. I don’t wish any ill will on him, or anything like that. But I took offense to what he did and I moved on. It’s not the first time."
Earlier in the interview, Royce spoke about how the skit "Perspective," which features Eminem, came together. "We were having a conversation, and the conversation inspired the idea for the skit," said Royce at 25:30. "As soon as we were done talking, I just asked him. I was like, 'Yo man, do you think if I sent you a beat that you could say all of that shit you just said?' He was just like, 'Well, I can give it a shot. I don't remember what the fuck I said.'"
Royce got straight to work on the instrumental, which took him a few days to get right. "I sent it over to him, and he did it right away," he added. "He talked for about 12 minutes. ... Marshall, we're a lot alike in this way, we babble. It was a lot things being repeated, a lot of, 'You know what I'm saying?' Paul just took it and just cleaned it up, cut it down a little bit, made it more concise."
"Perspective" saw Em declare that hip-hop has "brought more races together" than anything other music has. "So now you got little white kids growin' up with black idols. And you got black kids growin' up with white idols. And you got—it's just this whole mixing pot. Nothing has brought more races and more people from all different walks of life together than hip-hop," Eminem muses on the spoken word interlude. He also addressed how rock 'n' roll originated as a black genre before it was heavily appropriated by the likes of Elvis Presley.
Watch the full episode of For the Record above.
