Not to boil down the career of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time into a series of entertainingly and petty arguments, but if Eminem wasn’t such a distinguished rapper, maybe he could’ve found a way to carve a career out of starting rows with people. He’s brilliant at it. Even when his musical output has taken a dip, the Detroit rapper still finds a way to have some small print beef on the go with someone. He’s not above switching from genre to genre, either, his squabbles over the years ranging from Mariah Carey to Joe Budden, Christina Aguilera to Machine Gun Kelly, Ja Rule to Daniel O’Donnell, Insane Clown Posse to Will Smith, with only one of those quarrels made up.
One of the best, though, was a three-way barney between him, Limp Bizkit and rapper Everlast, with Eminem releasing a diss track titled Girls on the 2001 debut record by his spin-off group D12. In an interview at the time, Eminem explained why he felt compelled to dig out Fred Durst’s nu-metal titans, with whom he'd previously been friends. “The reason I dissed Limp Bizkit is because they’re little fucking girls,” Eminem began. “The reason I dissed them is because when all the beef with Everlast was going on, right, they wanted to jump in the middle of it, they wanted to jump in it with me and take my side and they wanted to do a song with me… Everlast did a song dissing me, then I dissed him back, then he dissed me back again, so I was going to diss him back again one final time so I was telling them about it and they wanted to get on the song.”
Eminem recounted Durst telling him to write some verses for him to sing and said Limp Bizkit turntablist shared his own thoughts on Everlast. “DJ Lethal is like, ‘Man, I hate Everlast, he comes over, he steals my weed,’ all this shit, so I’m like ‘OK, if you guys really want to get on a song, I’ll set up the studio time in LA, let’s do it’.”
This is the part, though, where their friendship hit the skids, the Limp lads obviously unaware of Eminem’s total dedication to seeing a diss track through. “So we set up the studio time, the day I get to the studio, that day, Fred pages us, ‘Yo, I’ve got a toothache, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it today and DJ Lethal says he doesn’t know how he feels about doing the song cos he’s still cool with Everlast’,” he explained. “So I’m thinking, ‘Alright, if he’s so cool with Everlast, why was he telling me he hates him?’. You don’t say that to somebody you barely know, I barely know those guys. That’s a little girl scout right there.”
Even then, though, Eminem said he didn’t have reason enough to fall out with Limp Bizket, even though we suspect that’s a lie. No, what Eminem identified as pushing him over the line was an interview that Lethal gave to MTV. “My opinion of them lowered but I thought, ‘I’ll do the song anyways’,” he said. “I still put their names in my raps and used them against Everlast and then, not even two weeks later, these motherfuckers are on MTV and they ask Lethal about the Everlast thing and Lethal says, ‘I think personally Eminem is a good rapper, he’s a better MC but I think in a fight, Everlast would whip his ass’. Now come on dawg! I’m sitting at home watching the TV and I’m like, ‘What?! What the fuck?! You were supposed to be on the song with me!’. What kind of shit is that? I would not have made a move if it wasn’t for that, if ten or twenty million people did not see him say that Everlast would whip my ass. There was no fucking call for it dawg, if you didn’t want to be in the beef, you shouldn’t have opened your mouth and had an opinion. So that’s why I dissed them.”
Watch the full interview below:
In an AMA session on Reddit a few years ago, Durst was asked about the fallout and offered up a diplomatic answer on the whole debacle. "I understand why he was upset, mainly with Lethal, but over time I've learned there are better ways to deal with things that upset us,” he said. “I have remained a loyal fan of his and choose to remember the good times we shared. He is definitely one of the very few best rappers of all time."
Maybe it’s best to view an Eminem diss track more like a badge of honour. If you’ve been in music for a while and you haven’t got one, you’re probably doing something wrong. Have a listen to Girls below:
