Credit: Alamy

Eminem has been involved in plenty of beefs in his tim.

Christina Aguilera, Ja Rule, Mariah Carey, Will Smith, Moby, and many, many more have incurred his wrath. Things could get nasty during some of these disputes, but, in many cases, Em would come to reflect on what had happened and try to resolve things. His feud with Everlast, for one, falls into this category. As nasty as things got between them, the two rappers would bury the hatchet in the end, with Em even expressing admiration for how Everlast had conducted himself.

Things got tense between Eminem and House of Pain rapper Everlast in 1999, when they met before a gig. Everlast, aka Whitey Ford, apparently tried to say hello to Em, but he was ignored. Eminem later claimed he hadn’t recognised him, but Everlast was of the opinion that Em had deliberately ignored him. That set the stage for a bitter feud that lasted for years.

Everlast featured on the Dilated Peoples song ‘Ear Drums Pop (Remix),’ and he took the opportunity to diss Eminem on it. This being the year 2000, in other words, the heyday of Eminem’s career and his wild, erratic Slim Shady persona, Em didn’t take that lying down. He responded by publicly speaking badly of Everlast, before releasing ‘I Remember (Dedication to Whitey Ford)’ with his group D12.

The song ‘Whitey’s Revenge’ came next from Everlast’s side, featuring mentions of Eminem’s difficult relationships with his mother and wife. But what really tipped Em over the edge was Everlast’s mention of his daughter, Hailie. Em couldn’t handle that, so, even though ‘Whitey’s Revenge’ ended with Everlast saying, “I ain’t wasting no more time with you man. Fuck that shit, that’s it,” signalling that he wanted to end the feud, Em kept it going.

He and D12 released ‘Quitter,’ which mocked Everlast’s words on ‘Whitey’s Revenge,’ with Eminem saying at the end of the track, “Fuck him, that’s it, I’m done, I promise, I’m done, that’s it.” They might well have ended things there, except that other people started getting involved.

Dilated Peoples rapper Evidence backed up his friend Everlast by dissing Eminem on his song ‘Search 4 Bobby Fisher,’ while DJ Lethal of House of Pain and Limp Bizkit publicly speculated that Everlast would beat Eminem in a fight. Eminem responded with a diss track against both Everlast and Limp Bizkit called ‘Girls.’ Everlast apparently recorded another diss track against Eminem, but, in the end, he never released it and, over time, their feud ended.

It was a long battle between Eminem and Everlast, but, somehow, it seems they emerged from it with some degree of mutual respect in check. Em even seems to have admired Everlast. “Yeah, me and Everlast had a pretty good beef going back then,” he told Vibe in 2010. “We’ve squashed it now but yeah we were going after each other for a while. I was a hell of a lot angrier person back them. [Laughs.] My mentality was just [sic] everybody. It may even be rooted in the way I was treated growing up. It might be psychological.”

Eminem even came to see Everlast’s perspective on the whole feud, apparently recognising that his own behaviour hadn’t always been so great. “Shit,” he said, “there was a couple of lines Everlast said like, ‘You ain’t running up on me with no empty gun.’ I know there is a lot of shit that I would have said about me.”