Eminem and Jay-Z both sit in the pantheon of hip-hop greats. They have helped elevate the genre to unprecedented heights. While ‘Slim Shady’ has been at the top of the pile for over two decades, Jay-Z has offered him a constant source of inspiration.
The two enigmas linked up in 2001 for Jay’s seminal masterpiece, The Blueprint, when Eminem stole the show on ‘Renegade’. Even Jay later admitted that he had an off-day compared to ‘Shady’ and got overshadowed on his own track.
Jay later explained he wasn’t offended by the common consensus Eminem bossed him on ‘Renegade’ and revealed he was in agreeance with that belief. “No, I think Eminem is very intelligent rapper. It’s just when you make 4000 songs, I’m a constant collaborator, you know and some people gonna have better days. It’s just the way it is.
“But if we count the amount as the competitor and if we count the amount of records that I’ve been on versus people who had better performances then it’s gonna be 400 to 3.”
It’s a mark of Jay-Z as a man that he can admit that Eminem took the W on that one. The two rappers have a strong relationship, and his positive affirmations about ‘Shady’ have been reciprocated.
Speaking to Complex in 2017, Eminem discussed the omnipresent influence of Jay over every facet of his artistry. “I look to Jay for a lot of shit,” he said. “I look to Jay for where he’s at in life and I look for 4:44, the punchlines. I’m listening to music in a way that most people probably aren’t.
“To me it’s like, Jay is a good guy because he’s a guide for… It’s almost like he can see what’s going on in hip-hop. He’s very in tune with the times and then he does something his own way, and then other people follow it. That’s amazing to me, so I’ve always looked up to Jay for that.”
Eminem and Jay-Z are arguably the two most celebrated hip-hop artists of all time. Yet, they’ve never had a grain of animosity towards each other, and instead, they looked over their shoulder in awe to improve their own game. Let’s hope that after 20 years, we hear a sequel to ‘Renegade’, and Jay-Z gets his chance to equal the score.
