The one singer Eminem wished he had sex with: “She’s beautiful”
Eminem has never been shy of throwing a sex reference or two into his music. His songs are often filled with lewd fantasies, but there’s one star in particular that, during an interview, he lustily admitted to desiring.
Em spoke to the Guardian in 2002, the same year that his fourth album The Eminem Show was released and became a global phenomenon. Moral panics and hand-wringing about Slim Shady were at their height in those days, but Eminem was more than happy to play up to it. He was often out to shock.
At the end of the feature, the interviewer posited a number of outrageous rumours that were going around at the time and Em to comment on them. Some of them were absurd—was he, for example, dead?—while some were more serious, such as the claim that he was addicted to painkillers. Others revolved around his love life.
The interviewer had heard through the grapevine that Eminem had enjoyed a fling with a fellow star, who themselves were on the path towards pop culture greatness at the time. Her name was Beyoncé Knowles.
Beyoncé, in 2002, was only beginning to find her feet as a solo artist, away from her group Destiny’s Child. She starred in Austin Powers in Goldmember that year, as well as featuring on her future husband Jay-Z’s song ‘’03 Bonnie & Clyde.’ That marked her solo music career’s breakthrough.
So had Eminem really had a fling with the young Beyoncé, as some were claiming at the time? “No,” Eminem answered plainly, “me and Beyoncé are not fucking.”
Em killed the rumour stone-dead, but he did admit he would have quite liked to be with Bey. “I wish,” he said. “She’s beautiful. All of Destiny’s Child are beautiful. Oh, I love Beyoncé.”
Eminem may never have gotten to live his lustful fantasies involving Beyoncé, but, at the very least, he did go on to work with her. They made the song ‘Walk on Water’ together for his ninth album Revival, which marked a different sort of wish fulfillment for Em.
“I didn’t think it ever could happen,” he said of his collaboration with Bey on his SiriusXM Shade 45 channel in 2017. “It was one of my things on my wish list, but I wasn’t sure if it ever could happen, and also I never really had the right song to bring her, to present, so I’m super grateful that came together.”