Benzino speaks on Ja Rule’s beef with 50 Cent, his beef with Eminem, and more.
Benzino recently sat down with The Hip Hop Uncensored Podcast for a new interview where he discussed his experiences with 50 Cent and Eminem. He details the feud between Ja Rule and 50 Cent‘s crew where it was said that Fifty was stabbed on March 24, 2000. He received three stitches after getting stabbed. Ja Rule was filming in Queens when 50 Cent and an associate stole Ja Rule’s necklace. Chris Gotti and Irv Gotti, Murder Inc. CEOs were accused of assaulting 50. The accused later admitted that he had stabbed 50 Cent in self-defense when he believed someone was carrying a gun.
“Everything happened at one point, the Eminem beef, federal investigation, and that started the demise of the Source [Magazine],” says Benzino. “At this point, I am in New York and recording, 50 Cent, they were all on the 54th street, the hit factory in Sony Studios. All the big artists would be recording. So I was chilling downstairs in the hip-hop room. So jesus cool jesus at the time brings in this dude, I was f–king with the track masters at the time. So he brought a man and he just stabbed 50 Cent. So I called the car service of the Source and just got him to the hospital.”
“And then later on when the Eminem beef happened, he’s getting millions of dollars now he can’t go against him, I didn’t hold that against him. But there wasn’t no beef with him, you know beef is different man, beef is like ni–as dies in beefs. Rap beef is different from that kind of beef. So I didn’t take this as something life threatning. I wasn’t worried about nothing and nobody. So how I felt about Eminem, I had to put it in raps.”
“Ja Rule was beefing with 50 Cent, and my feud with Eminem started at the same time as Ja beefing with 50. I moved next door to him, we become good friends and it make it look like we together against them. And at that time was our last days in the Source.”
Later, Benzino concurred with the interviewer’s suggestion that it was “clear” that he is now 50’s adversary due to his connection with Ja Rule. “The point is, I helped that man in a real situation,” he said later, around the 12:31 mark. “F–k the Eminem s–t, f–k the Ja Rule sh-t. I helped that man. Me, Benzino, helped 50 Cent. Regardless of anything, I found it in my heart to help that man. I could have been like, ‘Get the f–k out my studio, I don’t want to have nothing to do with this, why you even down here?’ I didn’t do that.”
Ja went for the jugular in the song “Loose Change,” singling out Slim Shady’s family with the lines:“Em, you claim your mother’s a crackhead/And Kim is a known s–t/So what’s Hailie gonna be when she grows up?”
Eminem retaliated quickly, with songs like “Doe Rae Me (Hailie’s Revenge)” and a remix of 2Pac’s “Hail Mary” starring 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes. Ja then responded with his own diss recordings, including “Clap Back.”
When Eminem signed 50 Cent to his Shady Records brand in 2002, he accidentally became embroiled in the feud between Ja Rule and 50 Cent. Ja dissed Eminem on “Loose Change” the next year, which Slim Shady reacted to on “Hail Mary.” On tracks like “Doe Rae Me (Hailie’s Revenge)” and “Blood In My Eye,” the feud persisted.
Eminem took his beef in Like Toy Soldiers” from his fifth album Encore (2004). Eminem’s attempts to mitigate violence in the hip-hop community are described in “Like Toy Soldiers.” Eminem discusses openly his issues with The Source magazine and its editor Benzino, as well as the situation between 50 Cent and Ja Rule and their label Murder Inc., which he believed went well beyond the Jay-Z vs. Nas feud.
Benzino’s contentious dispute with Eminem and Dr. Dre, as well as their common label, Interscope, arose primarily from The Source’s review of Eminem’s sophomore album, The Marshall Mathers LP, in 2000. Benzino had been a co-owner of the newspaper for some years at that point. Notably, Benzino was blasted for prior editorial gaffes when he gave his own band, Made Men, a coveted four out of five ‘mics’ rating in 1998. Despite critical praise elsewhere, the magazine gave The Marshall Mathers LP a comparatively low rating of two ‘mics’ two years later. The feud immediately erupted when Benzino accused Eminem of being racist.
In an interview, Benzino’s daughter Coi Leray reacts to her father’s beef with Eminem. “I know that anything that has to do with Eminem, I don’t have nothing to do with those times,” she said. “So don’t involve me in them. I’m my own person, you feel me? Don’t do that.” “Imma ride for my father regardless, ’cause he’s my father,” Leray added. “I don’t give a f–k what anybody says.”
She continued, “I wasn’t there to understand, but what I do know now is all that rap beef sh-t, even just today, is just f–king noise to me … I just think it’s just so corny and I don’t pay no mind to it.”
Watch the full podcast below.
