Eminem gets candid with Sway in his first interview since dropping “Kamikaze.”
Eminem has never been one to hold his tongue on the mic. Since the days of Infinite and The Slim Shady LP, Em has become known for speaking his truth detailing his troubling relationships with women, remarking on the drama of other celebrities or declaring his disdain for the likes of Ja Rule or the former Source Magazine owner Benzino.
These moments of candor are all over on Kamikaze, Eminem’s surprise retaliation album created as a direct response to the legions of Revival haters. Em doesn’t pull any punches on the album. In fact, he goes straight for the jugular of all his haters out there who have gone on record having less than positive things to say about his previous project. Though Slim Shady explicitly puts in the crosshairs several people (including rappers, his ex and politicians alike) there are still a lot of questions left in the wake for fans and hater to decode after Eminem surprised fans and dropped it with no announcement or pre-promotion on August 31st.
To clear the air, Eminem sat down with his friend, long time hip-hop journalist and the host of Sway45 Morning Show on SiriusXM Channel 45 Eminem’s Hip-Hop Channel, Sway Calloway for an exclusive interview for his tenth studio album, Kamikaze. The hour-long conversation provides a lot more context to the more controversial portions of the album and he speaks about his shots at Tyler, The Creator, Joe Budden, Machine Gun Kelly and Donald Trump, while also opening up about the artists that he respects and admires, from Joyner Lucas to Drake.
Eminem very rarely does any press to promote albums, especially in the past few years. The interviews he has chosen to do have always been on his own term; additionally, you could only expect that whatever he’s going to say, he will say it, in only the way Eminem can. The iconic rapper sits down to address some of the questions that have always swirled around Revival and how that helped him push towards creating Kamikaze. The interview with Sway runs about an hour and is divided up into 4 parts. Anyone paying attention in the rap world has seen Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly (a white rapper who has previously been one of Slim Shady’s most outspoken fan) have been trading barbs and now diss tracks. Towards the end of part one, Eminem begins to speak on diss records, specifically his beef with Machine Gun Kelly and his blatantly inappropriate comments about Em’s (at the time) 16-year-old daughter, Hallie.
Over the past week, the shots Eminem fired off on Kamikaze has been the topic of conversation including the ones towards Machine Gun Kelly and Joe Budden. MGK recently shared his response titled, “Rap Devil” which became the top trending video on YouTube and the number one song on iTunes charts shortly after.
What started as a seemingly mellow rap battle turned into an all-out lyrical knife fight when Em dissed Kelly on “The Ringer” and “Not Alike.”
Most people thought that Em’s diss was in retaliation for MGK’s tweet calling his daughter Hailie “hot as fuck,” but it was much more rap-related. Em stated in his interview with Sway:
“The reason that I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that. The reason I dissed him… First he said, ‘I’m the greatest rapper alive since my fave rapper banned me from Shade 45.’ I could give a fuck about your career. You think I actually fuckin’ think about you? Do you know how many fuckin’ rappers that are better than you? You’re not even in the conversation.”
There are a ton more of the juicy tidbits in the interview including the fact that Donald Trump’s Secret Service agents showed up at his studio asking him if he was actually making a threat against the President or just expressing himself after his Trump-targeted BET Hip-Hop Awards cypher from October 2017, that his album Relapse makes him cringe and that he believes Jessie Reyez will be a huge star.
Check out the full interview with Sway below as well as the Eminem diss track “Killshot”