Nick Cannon and Eminem have been embroiled in a longstanding beef that stemmed from another beef between his ex-wife and the Detroit rapper. Like Ja Rule and 50 Cent, there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the world that can heal the wounds caused by their rift, even though the marriage between the two ended in divorce.
Back in 2001, it was rumored that Eminem and Mariah Carey dated for about six months, a relationship that Mariah Carey vehemently denied and famously addressed in her 2009 hit song “Obsessed”. News of Cannon’s marriage to the “Always Be My Baby” singer obviously didn’t bide well with the “Lose Yourself” rapper, who in reaction released a song about rekindling their romance, while taking shots at Cannon.
“Mariah, what’s ever happened to us, why did we have to break up?/All I asked for was a glass of punch/You see, I never really ask for much,” Eminem rapped in the song “Bagpipes from Baghdad”, while he continued to name drop the legendary singer amidst his metaphor filled rhymes. Other lyrics sometimes included derogatory terms directed towards the legendary singer. “Yeah baby, I want another crack at ya/You can beat me with any spatula that ya want/I mean I really want you bad, you c**t,” would fly towards her, while he had other harsh words reserved for Cannon.
“Nick Cannon better back the f— up/I’m not playin’, I want to bag ya punk,” he rapped, also saying other threatening lines like “Nick you had your fun/I’ve come to kick you in your sack of junk/Man I could use a fresh batch of blood,” in the almost 5-minute record.
Once the jab filled song caught the attention of Cannon, he undeniably took offense and addressed it in his blog, calling the rapper’s effort “A mediocre (at best) Eminem record that sounds like it was written in 2001. At first, I thought it was old material that had been dug up from when dude ‘fantasized’ about having a pretend fling with Mariah,” he wrote. “But all of a sudden I hear my name in the verse! My first reaction was like, ‘This is his new sh–? Wow, that’s too bad.’”
“She has had enough difficulty in her life dealing with racial and ethnicity issues,” he continued before claiming Eminem could be a racist. “Believe it or not, Mariah is the same racial mixture as our beloved president, Barack Obama…Maybe I’m going too far, but I thought we got past the days where white men could spew vulgar obscenities at our beautiful queens and get away with it. What’s next? Are we going to let this trash say something horrible about our lovely first lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama? Or would Marshall have talked sideways out of his neck like this about Oprah Winfrey?”
Eminem later spoke on the record, and the response it drew from the Wild’N Out host. “I kinda spazzed out on that record, but I guess I spazzed out on every record,” he said during an interview with Tim Westwood at BBC Radio 1. “There’s a line on there that was a little harsh. It’s a harsh line. But it’s like this, the way I look at it: I had no idea he was gonna take it like he took it. I had no idea Nick Cannon was gonna start wildin’ out on me. No pun intended.”
He added, “I heard about some of the things he was saying. I didn’t read his blog or anything. But it is what it is. He’s supposed to defend his wife, and I expected him to do that. But at the end of the day, it’s a line I said; it’s a song. What I actually meant to say is, I wish them the best. That’s what I meant to say. That’s the whole message of the record.”
More back and forth between the two would continue for a while, and then the heat seemed to have died down between the two after it was announced that Cannon and Carey had divorced. However, the fire would quickly reignite in 2019 when Nick appeared on T.I.’s ExpediTIously podcast and reflected on the first time he heard the disrespectful song.
“I think we were flying back on a jet from Africa or somewhere and this MF drops a song, like, talking sh*t,” Cannon recollected. “Calling [Mariah] all kinds of [names]. I’m like, ‘This is my wife. This is my new wife.’ I wrote a letter first, I don’t even know if Twitter had come out yet.”
He continued, “So, I wrote this long a** letter pretty much saying, ‘Look, I respect you as an artist. ‘I’m actually a fan, and I think you’re one of the best ever to do it. But from man to man, you are talking out of pocket to my wife. You gotta be held accountable for that, so I need to see you face-to-face.’ I was like, look if you wanna get on the phone… if I gotta go to Detroit… You done disrespected my wife. I gotta show my wife I’m a man, for one. And two, he said my name. I said, ‘I know I’m not going to be able to out rap you, but I will whoop your a–.’”
Cannon also revealed in a later interview with Vlad TV that he had another ally who expressed he was ready and willing to “handle the situation” if need be. “Man I love Gucci,” said the Masked Singer host. “When me and Eminem had that so-called beef and that whole thing with Mariah, he was one of the first people like, ‘Hey bro, we can go handle it.’ Gucci said we gonna handle it. Who was on the ‘Obsessed’ record with Mariah? Gucci Mane … listen to his verse! If you listen to his verse, he talkin’ that s**t like, ‘Yo, it can happen.’ Gucci about that smoke.”
Gucci has expressed his disdain for comments labeling Eminem as the “King of Rap” or in Hip Hop’s top tier. “You gotta come up with a better one,” he stated in an interview with the Ricky Smiley Morning Show. “That ain’t even worth … ’cause I ain’t playin’ him in my car. You playin’ him in yours? You slidin’ around playin’ Eminem in your car with your old lady? Dolo play Eminem, just metaphors. Just goin’ in? [Laughs].”