The English synth-pop group Eminem threatened to run over
In 2003, a never-before-heard Eminem song found its way into the world. ‘Can-I-Bitch’ is a diss track against Em’s then-enemy Canibus, although he also found time to do a drive-by of another unlikely target in the song: Pet Shop Boys.
At one stage in the leaked track, which was on a bootleg album called Straight from the Lab, Em makes the sound of a car smashing into someone. “What was that?” he’s heard saying. “Pet Shop Boys.”
Pet Shop Boys are an incredibly successful synth-pop duo that emerged in London during the ’80s. After selling more than 100 million records and scoring several hit singles in their time, they can rightly be considered as one of Britain’s most successful pop acts ever. But how did such a group, gay icons made up of Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant, become the target of a hip-hop star like Eminem?
It turns out that it was the English stars who threw the first punch. On their 2002 album Release, Pet Shop Boys included a song called ‘The Night I Fell in Love.’ This contains a narrative of a young man, still in school, who has sex with a rapper he idolises and then falls in love with.
The rapper is never named, but there are stark clues as to his identity. At one stage, vocalist Tennant sings, “Over breakfast made jokes about Dre and his homies,” and at another point he sings, “Hey man, your name isn’t Stan, is it?” Dre and Stan are names quite closely associated with a particular rapper known as Eminem.
Pet Shop Boys have explicitly admitted the rapper in their song was, indeed, Eminem. They had decided to include him in their story of a gay fling in response to Em’s frequently homophobic lyrics—although they don’t seem to have taken it personally.
Speaking to NME about their “beef” with Eminem, keyboardist Lowe noted that Eminem’s attack on his group was done “very humorously,” while Tennant admitted that they “accepted Eminem wasn’t homophonic, he was just playing a character.”
Tennant went on to emphasise that they were, in fact, fans of Eminem’s work. “We were obsessed with Eminem at that point,” he said. “Eminem was a fantastic pop star in that late-’90s, early-’00s period. That was written when ‘Stan’ was out, which is an amazing record.”
Pet Shop Boys, though fans of Eminem, decided he needed to put in his place a bit, so they created a tale of him having sex with a teenage boy. In turn, he threatened to run them over in his car. Yet, despite the extremes that both disses dealt in, it seems it was all done in good humour.