Before the recent release of his album Drillmatic: Heart vs Mind, Compton rapper, The Game took to Instagram to reveal the tracklist for the album. At 30 songs long, the rapper insisted that there is not one track from the album that listeners would want to skip. However, the rapper did not reveal that the track ‘The Black Slim Shady’ was a brutal diss track, not a tribute track.
Eminem and The Game have undoubtedly had some heated exchanges over the years, but this has taken their already precarious and problematic relationship to another level. The over 10-minute scathing track opens with a witty skit aimed at Slim Shady.
The track opens with audio of an uber driver receiving a call from his grandmother telling her that he is final uber destination is “somewhere near 8 Mile.” Around the 2:52 mark of the song, we hear The Game being picked up by the Uber driver.
As he’s in the Uber, the rapper “Hey yo, I really f*ck with that Starter cap; that sh*t hard as f*ck”, to which the driver responds, “crazy story behind it. My brother Stan, rest in peace, he gave me this hat 22 years ago. It’s my favourite.” Here the Game is aiming at Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers), who created ‘Stan’, a fictional die-hard Eminem fan who dies at the end of a song of the same name. The cap turns out to be signed by Eminem.
In the audio, the driver states that Eminem “used to be like this rap god, but that’s when I was little. I don’t really like his new stuff.” The phrase “used to” makes quite uncomfortable listening. Throughout the track, The Game continues to fire shots at Mathers, from his ex-wife Kim Mathers to his daughter Hailie. He even goes as far as to address his whiteness, rapping, “So oh, he goes platinum and oh, I’m on the ‘Math with him / He got all the Blackest friends, he wants to be African” and then mocks his addiction struggles.
The Compton rapper closes up the diss track by insisting that Big Sean is the biggest rapper in Detroit, claiming he would rather listen to “Snitch9ne” (rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine) than Slim Shady.
The entire song is very controversial, and at 10-minutes long, the Compton rapper really does give Mathers a thorough thrashing. Eminem is yet to respond, but in the meantime, you can listen to the track in the video below.
