Yelawolf was a recent guest on Drink Champs, where he opened up about his relationship with Eminem and his time with Shady Records. During the conversation with co-hosts N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, the Slumerican founder explained how he inadvertently sparked the infamous beef between Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly in 2018.
As Wolf recalls, Three 6 Mafia member DJ Paul wanted to get Eminem, Machine Gun Kelly and Yelawolf on a song together, but it didn’t exactly work out. Unbeknownst to Wolf, Eminem was sitting on an MGK diss that was included on the Kamikaze single “Not Alike.”
“I can’t say I was fully blind to it,” Wolf begins. “There was something in the air. But DJ Paul, my brother, we were in Nashville working on Trunk Muzik III. He was like, ‘Yo, I got this rowdy beat. If I could get you, Kellz and Marshall on this s###, it would be out of here. It would be the three craziest white boys on a record that’s ever been heard.’ That was his whole thing. I was like, ‘Man, f### it. Let’s go.’ So I laid my verse and I sent it to Kellz, and Kellz was super excited about it.”
He continues, “I recorded it, Kellz recorded his verse, sent it to Marshall and crickets. Crickets for months. I didn’t know there was a diss record coming. I was on Shady at the time. And I’ve got this record coming out on Shady. It’s a thing. It’s a Shady release. He puts this diss record out. I have no clue. He didn’t say s### to anyone. I’m sitting here with this record, it’s me, Paul and Kellz. I was like, ‘Oh man, what the f### am I going to do?’ Within an hour of it hitting the internet, Kellz FaceTimes me and I picked up the FaceTime and Kellz is just shaking his head like, ‘Nah, man.'”
Yelawolf was caught in the middle but didn’t dissuade Machine Gun Kelly not to reply to the diss. He also couldn’t promise it wouldn’t affect his then-blossoming friendship with MGK.
“Do what you do,” he says. “I guess if you wanna man up and go there, then go there. But I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with you and me. This may turn into a problem with me. I was like, ‘Dawg.’ I was with Shady, so if the general says go, you go. That’s my gang. I was Shady Records.
“I finally got Marshall on the phone. … I was in Toronto. This was after he released the record and MGK drops his s###. He said something about, ‘Don’t take me off Yelawolf album.’ I called Marshall and said, ‘Listen man, I like this song I got with Kellz.’ I had a beef with Kellz early, early on.’ I addressed it on Bootleg Kev, like if you want it, let’s go. But I met him, we handled it, we squashed it and it was all good. That was years ago…we’ve since become good friends. I asked Marshall, ‘What do you want me to do?’ He said to me, ‘Put that s### out. People need to hear it.’ He respected my career during all of this.”
The fallout between Eminem and MGK began in 2012, when Machine Gun Kelly tweeted about Eminem’s daughter Hailie, saying she was “hot” despite her being only 16 at the time. The comment reportedly upset Eminem and, as a result, MGK made several veiled references to Eminem in his music and interviews, suggesting Eminem had tried to blackball him in the industry.
After “Not Alike,” MGK responded with “Rap Devil” in which he took shots at Eminem’s age, career and personality. It was unclear if Eminem would respond, but surprisingly he did. “Killshot” arrived shortly after and found Eminem dissecting MGK’s career, personality and his attempts to gain relevance by attacking him. The feud brought considerable publicity to both artists. MGK leveraged the attention to further his career, diversifying into rock music with his album Ticket to My Downfall.
