The first half of Eminem’s exclusive interview with Sway gave fans plenty to talk about. Throughout the 12-minute video, the two focused primarily on Em’s last two albums: the polarizing 2017 effort Revival, and his newly released surprise project Kamikaze. Though the first part of the discussion was filled with plenty of gems, things got really interesting towards the end when the Detroit rapper began speaking about his beef with Machine Gun Kelly and Joe Budden.
"Me and Joe Budden aren't, you know, we're not friends like that. We didn't go to the same fuckin' high school. You know what I'm sayin?" Eminem says in the second part of the interview. "I get that part. But when I'm out here, flying around to different places and doing interviews and trying to use my platform to pump up Slaughterhouse every chance I get, and you're using your platform to try to trash me [...] That's kind of the attitude I took to this whole album, Kamikaze, is like, 'OK, what if I gave everyone my opinion about them."
Slaughterhouse—Budden's now-defunct hip-hop group with Joell Ortiz, Kxng Crooked, and Royce da 5'9"—signed to Shady Records in 2011. Eminem touched on the group's demise and their shelved Glass House project. He said the group definitely had enough records to release a proper album, but none of the members could agree on which tracks to include.
"For the most part, it wasn't a complete picture because everybody wasn't on the same page of what their favorite songs were," Em explained. "So I thought they were gonna to go back home, regroup, and try to make a few more songs. I didn't hear anything from that, and at that point, I started getting really deep into Revival."
Em touched on the criticism Slaughterhouse received for their 2012 album, Welcome to: Our House. He said many people bashed the project for being "too polished," which is why he hesitated to get involved during the recording process.
"We left the ball in their court [...] I didn't wanna touch it, other than give my opinion on songs," he said. "[...] We gave them another album and the next thing I know, I hear Joe talking about 'Who got that money?' Who got what money? [...] I don't know if I made a dime off of Slaughterhouse. I don't care if I made nothing. I believed in them."
Em took shots at Budden on the Kamikaze track "Fall." He referenced Budden's alleged sexual abuse with the lines: "Somebody tell Budden before I snap, he better fasten it / Or have his body bag get zipped / The closest thing he's had to hits is smackin' bitches."
Eminem called the diss a "tap."
"It was a tap, but it was also saying that his alleged domestic abuse things or whatever, which I'm not going to get into," he said (5:45). "But I feel like the reason I had to do that is because, like I said, there's a fine line between saying, 'You know what? This guy's been really cool with me [...] So I'm not going to go in on 'Untouchable' like that."
Budden previously called Em's "Untouchable" track "fucking trash."
"To be the worst song you've ever heard in your life? Have you listened to your own shit?" Em said. "Do you not listen back? Because if that's the worst fuckin' song you've ever heard in your life? I don't know."
Though he said he wasn't sure if Glass House would ever see the light of day, he made sure to show love to Slaughterhouse, insisting they were "one of the best rap groups to ever happen."
The topic then turned to MGK.
As most of you know, Em took aim at MGK on the Kamikaze track “Not Alike,” rapping: “I’m talkin’ to you, but you already know who the fuck you are, Kelly/I don’t use sublims and sure as fuck don’t sneak-diss/But keep commenting on my daughter Hailie.”
It was a response to MGK’s 2012 tweet in which he called Eminem’s daughter, Hallie, “hot as fuck.” MGK, who previously accused Em of trying to blackball him, responded to the record with his own diss track, “Rap Devil.”
Eminem told Sway he wasn’t pleased about MGK’s comments about his child; however, that wasn’t the real reason he took a shot at him.
“You know you go down a fucking wormhole of YouTube and whatever, right? So I see, ‘Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem’s daughter’ or whatever, right? So I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ I click on it,” he explained (9:00). “Then he starts doing a press run, basically, about Hailie. I’m like, ‘What the fuck? Yo, my man better chill, right?’ So, that’s not why I dissed him. The reason I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that.
"The reason that I dissed him is because he got on—first he said, 'I'm the greatest rapper alive since my favorite rapper banned me from Shade 45,' or whatever he said, right? Like I'm trying to hinder his career. I don't give a fuck about your career. You think I actually fuckin' think about you? You know how many fuckin' rappers that are better than you? You're not even in the fuckin' conversation."
Em then referred to MGK's verse on Tech N9ne's "No Reason (The Mosh Pit Song)," in which is believed to include a reference to Eminem's "Rap God" cut: "I pop cherries and popstars, you popsicles is not hard/Popped in on the top charts out the cop car/To remind y'all you just rap and not God/And I don't care who got bars."
"Now I’m in this fuckin' weird thing, because I’m like, 'I gotta answer this motherfucker,'" he said. "And every time I do that, it makes that person—as 'irrelevant' as people say I am in hip-hop—I make them bigger by getting into this thing, where I'm like 'I want to destroy him. But I also don't want to make him bigger.' You know what I'm saying? 'Because now you're a fucking enemy' [...] I'll leave it at that. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do at this point right now."
Eminem said he heard "Rap Devil," and admitted that the track wasn't "bad for him—he's got some good lines in it."
Em also shot down the rumors that he reached out to Diddy in an attempt to get MGK to apologize. MGK made this claim in "Rap Devil."
"I've never made a fuckin' call to Diddy. Are you fuckin' kidding me?" he explained. "[...] It didn't even feel like a diss to me. It just felt, like, pitiful."
You can watch part two of the interview above.
