Eminem mocks Mariah Carey in “These Demons” on the new album.
Eminem’s debut collaboration with Dallas hip-hop artist MAJ offers thought-provoking comments as well as brilliant poetry. The first song that Eminem and MAJ collaborated on offers insightful analysis and deft poetry. No topic is off bounds for “These Demons,” as seen by the track’s abundance of allusions to famous people, popular culture, and current affairs.
“These Demons” clearly has no boundaries, since the song is rife with references to celebrities, pop culture, and current events. Through the COVID-19 epidemic and the riots around George Floyd’s death, Eminem finds a way to harness the civic upheaval in the United States and twist it into expressive commentary on the dissatisfaction that 2020 brings to the globe.
During the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, Eminem utilized the time to create new tracks for “Music to Be Murdered By,” finding a silver lining in the situation. In “Alfred’s Theme,” which was written after the first part of the album was released, he starts by cleaning the microphone with disinfectant wipes, a nod to the ongoing pandemic. As someone perceived by the public to be a recluse, the self-isolation seemed to come naturally to him. Eminem’s meticulous attention to detail not only applies to his rap music but also helped him adjust to the quarantine lifestyle.
With the exception of MAJ’s Twitter compliments, the song had virtually little promotion: “i just wanna say thank you to my idols/legends @rosenberg and @eminem for this crazy opportunity. Go stream the album, i’m ft on track 10 (These Demons)”
On Friday, Eminem’s deluxified Side B companion piece for his eleventh studio album, Music to Be Murdered By, was published. As is customary for the 48-year-old Shady co-founder, the album has a number of potentially headline-generating phrases. The fact that the most-discussed single so far—the White Gold-featuring “Zeus”—includes an apology from the artist over a decade-old tune that surfaced in 2019 is unusual for an Em album launch. It’s been a couple of days since Eminem returned with his new Deluxe Version of the “Music To Be Murdered By” album and we’re still trying to get on all the noteworthy references, name drops, and disses. On the track “These Demons“, Eminem once again brought up his ex-girlfriend and ex-wife of Nick Cannon, Mariah Carey.
Music To Be Murdered By – Side B (a.k.a. Music To Be Buried By) is the deluxe edition of Eminem’s twelfth studio album, dropped on December 18, 2020 at midnight Eastern Standard Time following a week-and-a-half of speculations and speculation about its existence. One of the musicians included on Music To Be Murdered By’s January release expressed denial, while Dem Jointz, who co-wrote “Never Love Again,” remained adamant that the deluxe edition was legitimate.
Although it is a new album, it is also a continuation of the previous album Music to be Murdered By – and, like its predecessor, it contains plenty of provocative lyrics that include Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish. So how can he miss Mariah Carey?
In the third verse, he starts with:
“I got a question (What?)
What rhymes with pariah?”
Eminem cynically links Mariah Carey’s first name to “pariah,” a derogatory term for someone who is disliked or an outcast. The answer being Mariah, she’s compared to an outcast or someone who’s despised and avoided. Pariah is often used to refer to a person who is widely shunned for some offense they have committed.
He continues:
“I’m addicted to friction and mischief
It’s like your bi**h’s midriff, sh*t gets my d**k stiff as a stick shift
D**k as in Cheney, drip as in saline
They bring my name up just to get ratings”
In these lines, he is probably talking about the strategy of Mariah Carey’s team, who used Eminem’s name for the promotion of her book “The Meaning of Mariah Carey“. Ahead of the release of her memoir in September, they created some rumours about the Detroit Rapper being stressed out over the possibility of revelations about him by Mariah.
Some feuds never seem to end. Since the early aughts, Mariah Carey and Eminem have been locked in a heated legal fight about their purported prior relationship. The pop star denied it ever took place, while the rapper maintained it did.
Mariah chose to confront the claims with her 2009 tune “Obsessed,” which went on to become a massive hit and portrayed Eminem as a smitten lover-boy. Most fans assumed the tale stopped there, but there was a lot more to it, from petty barbs on tour to Eminem threatening to leak private images and voicemails.
They spread reports about the Detroit Rapper being concerned about Mariah’s possible disclosures about him ahead of the release of her biography in September.
Eminem and Mariah Carey/Nick Cannon have a long history of feuding. Mariah contacted Em in 2001 about a possible inclusion on her album, but it never materialized. Eminem, being Eminem, began taking shots at Mariah Carey on his iconic tune “Superman”: Em then released “The Warning” in July 2009, which was generally regarded as ruining Nick Cannon’s (if he had one) and Mariah Carey’s careers.
Despite the fact that Carey did not officially reply to “The Warning,” Cannon did so in September 2010 with a song titled “I’m a Slick Rick” in which he criticised Eminem for his insulting lyrics about Carey and used a flow like that of rapper Slick Rick. Later, he even created a Facebook page to promote the notion of a charity boxing bout between himself and Eminem, but the event was never held.
At that time Cannon said in an interview that, “‘At first, I thought it was old material that had been dug up from when dude ‘fantasized’ about having a pretend fling with Mariah. But all of a sudden I hear my name in the verse! My first reaction was like, ‘This is his new sh*t? Wow, that’s too bad’.”
So far, the White Gold-featured “Zeus” single stands out for incorporating an apology from the artist for a decade-old tune that leaked in 2019. Eminem apologises to Rihanna over the Chris Brown lyric. Eminem muses on his years in the game in the third stanza of “Zeus,” stating he’s seen the “hugest debuts” while also witnessing other musicians come and go. Though hardly a diss, he cautions Drake that the public, based on his own experiences, will ultimately turn against him.
This whole narrative starts back in the day when Eminem was rumoured to have dated Carey for a short time. Despite Carey’s denials, the rapper released “Bagpipes Off Baghdad” from his Relapse album, which explicitly addressed Carey and her then-husband Cannon. “Mariah, what ever happened to us?/ Why did we have to break up?” he raps before adding, “Nick, you had your fun, I’ve come to kick you in your sack of junk.”
Mariah Carey responded with her own song, “Obsessed,” released in June 2009, in which Em was depicted as a Mariah Carey stalker in the video. Eminem didn’t take another jab at Mariah and Nick until ten years later on Fat Joe’s “Lord Above”
Music to Be Murdered By debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart in its first week, collecting 279,000 album-equivalent units (including 117,000 copies as traditional album sales).
“I know me and Mariah didn’t end on a high note/ But that other dude’s whipped — that p–sy got him neutered,” “Tried to tell him this chick’s a nut job before he got his jewels clipped/ Almost got my caboose kicked/ Fool, quit/ You not gonna do s–t/ I let her chop my balls off too before I lose to you, Nick.”
“Obsessed” was released on June 16, 2009, and to commemorate the occasion, Mariah utilised the song as the soundtrack for her participation into the famous “Wipe It Down” TikTok competition.
Mariah seamlessly transitions from dressing down to glammed up in the video. Not to mention the appearance of the “Slim Shady” rapper himself. (Or, rather, Mariah replicated her rendition of an Eminem-like demeanour from the 2009 video.)
She captioned the June 16 Instagram image, “Just for laughs.” “From last year’s lockdown, when all I did was clean things up. #HappyAnniversaryObsessed.”
This was Eminem’s tenth number-one album in the United States, making him one of just six artists to have had at least 10 number-one albums. The album’s tracks also received a total of 217.6 million on-demand streams. Music to Be Murdered By had sold over 1,053,000 equivalent units as of December 2020, including 249,000 in pure sales.
Eminem also reignited the beef with MGK in the same album on the track GNAT: “Fair weather, wishy-washy / She thinks Machine washed me / Swear to God, man, her favorite rapper wish he’d crossed me”
Machine Gun Kelly is also mentioned early in “Zeus,” when Eminem considers someone who feels MGK won their famed public feud: “They come at me with machine guns / Like trying to fight off a gnat”
He goes a step further by making fun of the 2013 Boston Marathon, in which 3 people were killed. “And I know nothing about the Manchester bombing is amusing,” Eminem sings in Favorite B***h, “But we got something in common, both of us are alarming, foul, disgusting, and awful, so repugnant and ugly.” “I could give the Boston Marathon a run for its money.”
He defended words in Unaccommodating earlier this year in which he rapped “I’m contemplating yelling ‘bombs away’”,'” referring to the ARIANA GRANDE concert at Manchester Arena in 2017.
Since the release of “Music To Be Murdered By Side B” in late 2020, the rapper hasn’t released a new project in three years. Last year, the Detroit rapper released a deluxe edition of his “8 Mile” Soundtrack to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album. In August, Marshall Mathers released his new greatest hits compilation album “Curtain Call 2”, featuring some of his top hits since 2009. The double disc album featured 16 tracks, including his most recent release “The King And I” with CeeLo Green, and “From The D 2 The LBC” with Snoop Dogg. In late 2022, he was also honoured with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.
In 2023, the rapper made his long-awaited return as he assisted to Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records’ newest signee Ez Mil on a brand new single “Realest“. The song made headlines after the Detroit rapper took shots at The Game, Melle Mel and Gen Z on the song.
