Murder On the Mic: 6 Things You Missed in…
Article #50: Entertainment
Outside of you living under a music-shielded rock, you’ve probably heard about the hip-hop music feud in the United States between Cleveland, OH’s own Machine Gun Kelly®, better known to his fans as MGK®, and, out of Detroit, MI, the highest selling rap artist in world history, Marshall Mathers, better known to the world as both Slim Shady® and Eminem®.
The History of the Eminem vs. MGK Beef
The origins of the conflict date back to 2012 when MGK said something about Eminem’s daughter’s looks on Twitter®.
Although what MGK said was an overall compliment, it was said in a crude manner. And, on top of that, Eminem’s daughter was underage, which MGK did not know at the time. However…
…if you know anything about Eminem, lack of knowledge doesn’t save anyone from the lyrically-savage consequences of their actions.
Have you ever seen or at least heard of the movie series John Wick? In this movie series, one of the themes that is universally known is that you don’t want to get on his bad side. Unfortunately for one bratty character, who was the son of a notorious gangster, he did so by doing something ruthless and petty to John Wick.
He killed his dog
Unbeknownst to him, that dog was the last gift of John Wick’s recently deceased wife. Needless to say, he learned a valuable, but unfortunately deadly lesson soon after:
You don’t kill John Wick’s dog.
Now imagine the love a father has for his daughter. Now multiply that times 10. That’s how Eminem feels about his beloved daughter. And, just like we understood in Hogwarts® in the Harry Potter® series, there’s one thing that the entire world knows when it comes to Eminem and his daughter.
Do not mention she who shall not be named.
MGK initially mentioning Eminem’s daughter’s name was bad enough, but he subsequently started to diss Eminem during what Eminem called MGK’s “press run”.
From the information we’ve gathered, MGK’s disses stemmed from him believing that his career was being stalled by forces directly or indirectly tied to Eminem. This was due to what was perceived as disrespect to Eminem from MGK because of the seen-as crass comments made by MGK about Eminem’s under-aged daughter;
For the next six years, Shady stood in the shadows watching MGK, as he took two musical ‘diss’ shots at Eminem.
The first shot was on the Funk Flex radio show where MGK did a freestyle that included a vague diss to Eminem. The second shot was on another rapper named Tech 9’s track where MGK did a feature diss.
And Eminem finally had enough. Slim Shady: Activated.
The rap world was lit aflame when Slim Shady unexpectedly came out of the shadows and dropped a diss track response to MGK called ‘Not Alike’.
The song was part of his record-breaking, surprise album named Kamikaze, featuring another lyrical genius and veteran rapper named Royce Da 5’9, which was dropped six years after MGK’s initial tweet.
And the war was engaged. And we don’t use the word ‘war’ lightly.
Being forged from a battle rap background, Slim Shady looks to annihilate opponents when he’s up against them. He doesn’t just look to beat them. He looks to absolutely destroy their entire musical existence.
That’s not a battle mentality. That’s a war mentality.
So, with the rap beef in full swing, Shady and MGK traded blows bar-for-bar, as MGK responded to ‘Not Alike’ with a track he’d seemingly been waiting to release called ‘Rap Devil‘ (it doesn’t seem to sound like anything else he’s ever written). The name of that track was ‘antithesis word play’ on one of Eminem’s most famous tracks called ‘Rap God‘.
Rap Devil was surprisingly potent and instantly garnered MGK a level of name recognition and global reach he’d never seen in his entire career.
MGK isn’t a person who craves the spotlight. However, unfortunately for him, that spotlight wasn’t his biggest problem.
His biggest problem was that his opponent was arguably the greatest rapper of all time: Eminem, in his lyrical John Wick-level Slim Shady form.
The rap war hit its apex when Slim Shady dropped his response to Rap Devil called ‘Killshot’. It was an absolutely savage track, layered with double, triple, and quadruple entendres. There was so much depth to this track that even after listening to it 50 times, there was still something that we missed, and we weren’t the only ones.
In this article, we’ll unveil six hidden gems found in Slim Shady’s Killshot record that most people, even reaction channels and videos, missed. Buckle up, because we’re about to take you on a ride through the thoughts of a lyrical mastermind.