By “I wanted to be respectful because what I do is Black music. I knew I was coming into it as a guest in the house,” he said.
“When things started happening for me, I was getting a lot of heat, being a White rapper, and XXL wrote something about that,” said Eminem. “I flipped to the last page first and XXL was dissing me. What the f*ck?”
“I don’t even know if I read the whole article—I was used to reading things like that about me—but it hurt because I felt they didn’t know me to make that kind of judgment,” he continued. “Coming up, I had to deal with that a lot. I wanted to be respectful because what I do is Black music. I knew I was coming into it as a guest in the house. And XXL, The Source, Rap Pages and Vibe were hip-hop bibles at the time.”
Although he was upset, he was aware of why some in the industry would feel a certain way about his presence, especially as he amassed success.
“I understood, at the same time, everybody’s perception of a White guy coming into Hip Hop and all of a sudden things start happening for him. So, if XXL would’ve even had a conversation with me, maybe they would’ve understood me more. Obviously, I was upset. And it wasn’t just magazines. I had rappers left and right taking shots at me. I was used to that, too. Coming up through the battle scene, that didn’t mean sh*t to me, you know? I would go head-to-head with whoever.”
Obviously, he mended fences with the outlet, hence penning a cover feature, but did mention that he dissed XXL on “Marshall Mathers.” However, while beefing with Benzino, formerly of The Source, he used XXL to his benefit.
[via]
