Melle Mel addresses criticism for his comments on Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne.
The legendary Melle Mel has been in the headlines for his recent remarks on Eminem and others, and the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five icon finally addresses the criticism on the Hip Hop Corner podcast.
“Everybody’s just so angry that I would say that,” said Melle Mel. “I’ve even been branded a racist, which is neither here nor there because that’s almost impossible. I’ve been playing for all different kinds of people all my life. That is so far off-kilt that I don’t understand. But Eminem made a record, I guess the album was ‘White America’… where he said he wouldn’t be as popular if he wasn’t white.”
“So now my point, and it’s very simple, if he basically said what I said, we said very similar things, how could what he say not be racist but then what I said was racist? In other words, if he’s right for saying what he’s saying, then the only reason that I could be wrong is that I’m Black and I said it.”
Melle Mel addresses backlash over his comments about Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne. pic.twitter.com/OQjnJ0sjOY
— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) March 8, 2023
Previously, Melle Mel stated that Eminem is only top 5 because he’s white. “Obviously he’s a capable rapper. If you was talking about sales, he’s sold more than everybody. If you were talking about rhyme style, okay he got a rhyme style. But he’s white. He’s white,” he says. “So now if Eminem was another ni**a like all the rest of us, would he be Top 5 on that list when a ni**a that could rhyme just as good as him is 35? That had records and all that? He’s 35. He’s white.”
He continued, “And anybody could be as mad… They could feel how they wanna feel. If you don’t think that race plays a part in the equation of how great he is — I heard one of the dudes that’s down with him, Royce Da 6’9″ [Royce Da 5’9″] or one of those – I heard he’s just as good as Eminem. Why he ain’t as big as Eminem? Because he’s Black. Ain’t none of that sh*t hard to figure out. Eminem gets a top spot because he’s white.”
After that, Melle Mel brought up the fact that Eminem had positioned himself after Redman, JAY-Z, 2Pac, Biggie, André 3000, Jadakiss, Kurupt, and Nas. “Moving on from that fact, he also in another record, ‘Till I Collapse,’ named maybe five or six individuals and he put himself behind these five or six individuals. And I had said that he wouldn’t be in the top five other than the fact that he was white, but then he said that. “So now my point, and it’s very simple, if he basically said what I said, we said very similar things, how could what he say not be racist but then what I said was racist? In other words, if he’s right for saying what he’s saying, then the only reason that I could be wrong is that I’m Black and I said it.”
He received backlash from fans and other rappers like 50 Cent, Fat Joe, Papoose, Kevin Gates and more.
