![]() ![]() (It matters a great deal, still.) Eminem is famous enough to still debut atop Billboard’s album chart and yet washed enough to spend most of that album complaining about the poor reviews for his previous chart-topping album. It’s the hapless son trying to slay the exhausted father to his style.īut it is also, as you say, very much about two white rappers grappling with the degree to which their whiteness matters as the rap universe mutates around them and surpasses them. This conflict is, with apologies to Oedipus, Oedipal. MGK is, explicitly, an Eminem disciple-the full text of the inciting 2012 tweet, which I am delighted to reproduce for you here, is “ok so i just saw a picture of Eminem’s daughter.and i have to say, she is hot as fuck, in the most respectful way possible cuz Em is king.” Kelly remains, in his way, that respectful: Even the “Rap Devil” line “Homie, we get it, you’re the greatest rapper alive” can’t fully commit to its sarcasm. “I’m 45 and still outselling you.” “I’d rather be 80-year-old me than 20-year-old you.” And so forth. Race certainly factors heavily into it (“little white toothpick,” etc.), but only alongside what for Em is an overfamiliar Old Man Yells at Dirtbag Cloud approach. What is notable, maybe, about this MGK-Em situation is that to me it’s both White vs. Harvilla: I wholeheartedly support an Eminem-Tekashi brawl, provided (a) Eminem drop-kicks Tekashi to the moon, and (b) I don’t have to actually listen to any of it. It’s Eminem beefing with Everlast all over again. That, at least, would present a real and definitive contrast of generations and musical styles-the sort of contrast that Eminem solicits whenever he’s whining about the SoundCloud generation that’s left him behind. I would rather watch Eminem battle Tekashi 6ix9ine. I think it’s necessarily embarrassing for white rappers to underscore their own whiteness in such a loud and contentious fashion. Joe Budden has waged war on Eminem too, but he’s become a sideshow. It’s too much to ask me to also suffer multiple MGK freestyles and pay attention to G-Eazy’s Instagram account as the price of admission for a desperate Eminem album rollout. It’s hard enough tolerating new Eminem music in this particular decade. The deeper it goes, the more obnoxious it gets, e.g., the glistening dirtbag G-Eazy now being involved. There’s some inherent insufferableness to this feud. Justin Charity: You can always count on me to be vaguely annoyed about popular culture. But I sense, Justin, that you are concerned. G-Eazy is now involved, ostensibly on Eminem’s side given the whole Halsey thing, and so you’re gonna get like 200 Instagrams of these people flipping the camera the bird. The funniest line on “Rap Devil” is “Somebody grab him some clippers / His fuckin’ beard is weird” the funniest line on “Killshot” is “How you gonna name yourself after a damn gun and have a man bun?” So what we have here, specifically, is two white rappers insulting one another’s grooming habits. On Friday, Eminem released “Killshot,” a crabby if lively diss track aimed at the young(er) Cleveland rapper Machine Gun Kelly, the latest salvo in a long feud that began in 2012, when MGK opined on Twitter that Eminem’s then-teenage daughter, Hailie, was “hot as fuck.” Technically, “Killshot” is a response to MGK’s “Rap Devil,” unleashed earlier this month in response to several discouraging words that appeared on Eminem’s Billboard chart-topping SEO nightmare of a surprise-dropped new album, Kamikaze, most notably on “Not Alike.” The resulting beef has generated historic numbers for YouTube, and Genius, and the guy who is now somehow producing diss tracks for both sides. And this is troubling, and fascinating, and also, if we’re being honest, pretty hilarious. ![]() Rob Harvilla: The white rappers are angry. Eminem called out Machine Gun Kelly on his surprise album Kamikaze MGK in turn responded with “Rap Devil,” a scathing diss record against Em, who in turn released a rebuttal called “Killshot.” What happens when white rappers attack? Two Ringer staff writers examine what is and isn’t beyond the pale. ![]()
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