What Eminem Has Said About His Famous Feuds

In 2012, Machine Gun Kelly tweeted that he just saw a picture of Hailie Mathers, Eminem's daughter, and that “she is hot as f***.” Despite the younger artist tagging on that he meant no disrespect and that “Em is King,” the damage had been done. 

Though Eminem didn't respond for years, the threat of a diss track rattled MGK. When he was featured on Tech N9ne’s “No Reason” in 2018, he referenced Mathers's song “Rap God,” saying:

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, you’re not Gods / And I don’t care who got bars

This is when Eminem popped off and returned the diss in “Not Alike,” calling Machine Gun out by name multiple times. 

After Kelly responded with another song, saying “Took you six years and a surprise album just to come with a diss,” the elder rapper responded in a 2018 interview with Sway Calloway. He explained that what started with protecting his daughter turned into an ego battle:

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 f*** about your career. You think I actually f***ing think about you? You know how many f***ing rappers are better than you? You’re not even in the f***ing conversation.

Eminem may have a lot of feuds but he can also be a loyal friend - as seen when he picked up his beef with Ja Rule from 50 Cent. After a series of diss tracks flew between 50 Cent and Ja Rule, the latter went after all of his allies, including Em in “Loose Change.” He rapped, 

Em, you claim your mother's a crackhead / And Kim is a known sl*t / So what's Hailie gon' be when she grows up?

Eminem was obviously offended at the implication and the two thus engaged in their own musical battle. The Detroit native addressed the beef in an interview with Sway where he talked about how the escalation inspired his song “Like Toy Soldiers”:

Now I've inherited 50's beef. He's inherited mine so now he can't be on the cover of The Source magazine because I got this beef over here. And he's being attacked by Ja. Ja's saying things about me. Then all of a sudden, [he] comes out of space and says a line about my daughter. So when it got to that level, that's when it got crazy.

The beef between Christina Aguilera and Eminem is a long and sordid tale that still lasts to this day, despite starting nearly two decades ago. In 1999, Eminem married Kim Mathers, his girlfriend on-and-off again with whom he shared a daughter. The couple tried to keep this information hidden from the public until Aguilera revealed it during her What A Girl Wants MTV special. 

This upset the rapper, who dissed her in “The Real Slim Shady,” saying she had an STD. As biographer Kelly Kenyatta pointed out, a year later he explained why he retaliated to Kurt Loder on the same network where the feud began:

She heard I was married and didn't know for sure, so she went on national TV with it. I heard she did things with Fred Durst, and I hear she did things with Carson Daly, so I went on national TV with it. It's an eye for an eye. 

The two seemed to make up at the 2002 VMAs, speaking together backstage after the show. However, this truce eventually soured when the rapper dissed her once again in 2018's “Kick Off” saying, "F*** Christina with a plastic spoon while I bump some G-Funk and blast some Snoop.”

One way to get on Marshall Mathers's bad side is to deny that you've dated him. After he claimed he and Mariah Carey dated in his 2002 song “Superman,” the self-titled queen of Christmas denied any romantic relationship between the two. 

This incensed Eminem so much that he still held a grudge against her in 2009 when he rapped unkind things about Carey and her then-husband Nick Cannon in “Bagpipes Over Bagdad”:

Mariah, whatever happened to us? / Why did we have to break up? / I can’t imagine what’s going through your mind after such a nasty breakup with that Latin hunk Luis Miguel / Nick Cannon better back the f*** up / I’m not playin’, I want her back, you punk… I mean, I really want you bad, you c*** / Nick, you had your fun, I’ve come to kick you in your sack of junk

This didn't stop Carey from her own musical retaliation with the song “Obsessed,” out the same year. 

Eminem followed with “The Warning,” considered one of the most volatile diss tracks of all time. In it, he said the former couple only dated for six months, called her a bunch of sexist words, and detailed their odd relationship. 

Outside of his songs, he hasn't said much about Carey to the press, instead saving his comments for his Sirius Satellite Radio channel:

Yes, me and Mariah did have a relationship for about a good six, seven months. (But) it didn’t work. I wasn’t really into what she was into; our personalities collided. She’s a diva, and I’m a little more regular, I guess… I can never deny her talent, but the fact that she denied we ever had something, that’s bad.

Of all the people Eminem could feud with, Moby was not at the top of the list. But sure enough, when the DJ spoke out against the rapper's lyrics, the beef started. "He's very good at what he does and he's very clever, but he's also a homophobe, a racist, and a misogynist, and I find that objectionable," Moby told Deseret News in 2001 at the Grammys. 

Eminem then dissed him in “Without Me,” saying, 

And Moby? You can get stomped by Obie / You 36-year-old bald-headed ***, blow me / You don't know me, you're too old, let go / It's over, nobody listen to techno.

He continued on to diss him at the 2002 MTV Movie Awards when the two were seated next to each other, prompting the rapper to insult Moby during his acceptance speech. “Keep booing, little girl. I will hit a man with glasses.” 

From there, things began to simmer down. In his book, Eminem: The Way I Am, the rapper summed up his thoughts on the entire situation:

All my life I'd been trained to react. […] My instinct was, if someone talks about you, you see them, you fight. But MOBY? Really? I was going to fight MOBY? […] In hindsight, I should have handled it differently.

Getting in Eminem's line of fire is not always the best idea, something Limp Bizkit learned the hard way. This battle began when Everlast felt snubbed by Eminem when they ran into one another backstage at an event. After that, Everlast released a verse on a Dilated Peoples track in which he made a thinly veiled reference to Eminem in the line "Cock my hammer / spit a comet like Haley / I buck a .380 on ones that act shady." 

Eminem responded in a B-Side called "I Remember," released on a D-12 vinyl. In Everlast's follow up, he made a reference that implied Hailie might not actually be Marshall's child. This brought out the Real Slim Shady, who hit Everlast with the track "Quitter," where he tore Everlast to shreds on both a personal and professional level by attacking his career and his heart condition.

How does Limp Bizkit play into all of this? According to an interview Em did in the 2000s, the rap rock band was interested in joining the “Lose Yourself” rapper in his latest diss against Everlast. After expressing their qualms about him on tour, Eminem invited them to join in on a verse. Once the studio was booked however, the band bailed, with lead Fred Durst blaming a toothache. 

Though this didn't sit well with Eminem, he still gave them a second chance. According to him, this changed a few weeks later when Limp Bizkit was asked about the feud on MTV and member DJ Lethal responded with “Em is a good rapper. He's a better MC, but I think that in a fight Everlast would whip his ass.”

Eminem didn't take this well and responded with the hidden diss track on D12's album Devil's Night, entitled “Girls”:

I would not have made a move if it wasn't for that. If f***king 10-20 million people did not see him say that “Everlast would whip my ass” – there was no f***ing call for it, dog. If you didn't want to be in the beef, then you should of stayed out of the beef. You shouldn't of opened your mouth with a f***ing opinion. That's it, so that's why I dissed them. And I look at them as a group, even though Fred – he's in the middle of it cause that's his crew. One of my crew disses somebody, we all diss somebody. That's how people are gonna look at it. That's how people look at it period.