Eminem’s number-one hater reveals he regrets his previous comments
Eminem’s list of enemies has become extremely long, and since he burst into the mainstream at the turn of the millennium, it has only continued to grow. During the early 2000s, Eminem was one of the most popular rappers in the world, but, unsurprisingly, his race meant that from the beginning, there were MCs who wanted to see him fall.
That said, during the 2010s, his age began to see him come under attack from many of the culture’s newcomers. Still, aside from Machine Gun Kelly, one artist seemed to have a particular issue with Slim Shady, and that was Tyler, The Creator.
Much of Tyler The Creator’s style was influenced by Eminem. Listeners could hear it in his music and lyrics. However, while he was shaping hip-hop culture with Odd Future, the LA native was also fighting with Eminem on Twitter and criticising the icon’s music.
That said, both MCs have grown since the early 2010s, but Tyler has admitted that he feels remorse for how he spoke to Eminem all those years ago. During a recent conversation with Mav Carter for an episode of Mavericks, the ‘Yonkers’ lyricist spoke about his respect for hip-hop and everybody within it, particularly Eminem. However, he felt he had to clarify what transpired with the Encore rapper.
Tyler admitted that he had a “limited” perspective when he was younger and shouldn’t have criticised Eminem’s 2010 album Recovery. However, he emphasised that he was a fan of Em, so everything he said was from a place of passion and love, not hate.
Opening up about his initial reaction to the album, Tyler recalled, “Eminem put out this album called Recovery, 2010. I was a big Eminem fan, and when that album came out, I fucking hated it. Hated it. Publicly was like, ‘This shit is wack.’ Didn’t like it.”
However, Tyler only found out after a Netflix series focused on the American opioid crisis featuring Eminem that the Relapse creator was struggling with readjusting to recording after a long stint of drug abuse and rehab at the time of its release.
The Flower Boy emcee admitted that this discovery made him feel very guilty, elaborating, “And after watching that show, dude, I felt so bad. I felt so bad about those tweets and things like that because thinking from his perspective, someone like me publicly saying that stuff and him getting off drugs and being clean and getting to a point in his life that that’s behind him. He probably felt like I was attacking him.”
In the Mavericks interview, Tyler explained to Mav that he thought he was merely stating that he didn’t “like the music” during Recovery’s rollout. However, he now views the entire scenario much differently.
Looking back in hindsight, Tyler The Creator unveiled that he has only begun to understand how turbulent that part of Eminem’s life was, telling the host,”He was in a different part of his life and probably felt like I was attacking him. Now, I feel so bad about saying stuff because my perspective was so limited. And I love him. That dude taught me how to rap. I learned how to put words together in rhythm because of some of the Eminem stuff I was hearing and storytelling and things like that.”
He concluded, “So after watching that show, that gave me perspective and I felt terrible. This was a few months ago I and I felt so terrible about some of the things I said about that Recovery album because I realised that was a big step.”