Remember when Eminem used to insist that he and Mariah Carey dated? Nick Cannon resurfaced the drama, revealing how Eminem’s ‘Bagpipes From Baghdad’ track made him go ‘looking for’ the rapper.
Nick Cannon, 38, was ready to confront Eminem, 46, “face to face” after the rapper dropped “Bagpipes From Baghdad.” It was 2009, and Eminem boldly claimed he and Mariah Carey, 49, had dated — yet again — and even took a shot at Nick, who had just married the pop star in 2008 (they split in 2014). “Mariah whatever happened to us / Why did we ever have to break up?” Eminem rapped in one line, later adding, “Nick Cannon better back the fu** up / I’m not playin’, I want her back, you punk.” While that may have seemed like standard rap shade, the name-dropping led Nick to seek out Eminem!
“He didn’t wanna battle me, it could have went down. I was like, whatever he wanna do, I’m with it,” Nick revealed on T.I.’s podcast ExpediTIously with Tip T.I. Harris, in a clip uploaded on Sept. 19. He continued, “You in a situation, we was flying back on a jet from Africa somewhere and this mother fu**er drop a song talking s**t, calling her all kind of b**ches and h*es. I’m like, this is my wife, this my new wife.” First, Nick decided to address this beef on paper.
“I wrote a letter first — I don’t even know if Twitter had came out yet — I wrote this long a** letter pretty much saying look, I respect you as an artist, I’m actually a fan, I think you are one of the best to ever do it, but from man to man, you talking out of pocket to my wife,” Nick revealed to T.I. The Masked Singer host wanted Eminem to be “held accountable,” and therefore Nick wanted to see the rapper “face to face” — “whatever happens when we face to face, happens.”
T.I. mused that Nick had “crazy white boy energy,” but Nick was serious about the meetup. “I was ready for whatever…[I] went looking for him. I called managers,” Nick told T.I., continuing, “I was like, look, if you wanna get on the phone, if I gotta go to Detroit. You done disrespected my wife. I gotta show my wife I’m a man, for one. And then two, he said my name. I’m like look, ‘I know I’m not going to be able to out rap you, but I will whoop yo’ a**.’ And those were the exact words, at the time.” We expect nothing less from Nick, who declared in the same podcast that he was to get married again, it would be to his ex-wife!
However, “cooler heads prevailed,” as Nick put it — and anyways, he felt like Mariah “won the battle” with her 2009 clapback track, “Obsessed.” As you recall, Mariah memorably sang in the song’s chorus, “Why you so obsessed with me? / Boy I want to know, lyin’ that you’re sexing me.” Nick also revealed that Eminem “apologized,” and remains in his “top five” list of rappers. It’s unclear when the truce was made, since Eminem fired back at “Obsessed” with yet another diss track for Mariah, “The Warning” — he rapped in the 2010 track, “Shut the f**k up before I put up all the phone calls you made to my house when you were ‘Wild N’ Out’ before Nick / When you was on my d**k / And give you something to smile about.”
Eminem first rapped Mariah’s name in his 2002 track, “Superman”: “What you trying be? My new wife? / What, you Mariah? Fly through twice.” Mariah shut down speculation that she and Slim Shady had a romantic history while appearing on Larry King Live in 2002. “I hung out with him, I spoke to him on the phone. I think I was probably with him a total of four times. And I don’t consider that dating somebody,” she told host Larry King.