Machine Gun Kelly is of the belief that his last album would have done much better had his history not included a feud with Eminem.
The beef between the two rappers appears to go back to 2018 and their series of diss tracks, but sources say it goes back even further. Marshall Mathers is rather protective of his daughter, Hailie, who turns 25 later this month, and probably didn’t take too kindly to MGK tweeting in 2012 that he found the then-16-year-old “hot as f***,” despite claiming to say it “in the most respectful way possible cuz Em is king.” Three years later, the “My Ex’s Best Friend” rapper claimed that his tweet as a 22-year-old had resulted in some radio stations refusing to play his music and others declining to review his albums.
Whether or not that is true, Machine Gun Kelly chose to run with the theory by making the beef public in 2018. On his verse on Tech N9ne’s track, “No Reason,” the Cleveland artist included a shady reference to Eminem’s song “Rap God” with the lyrics, “Popped in on the top charts out the cop car / To remind y’all you just rap, you’re not God.” The Grammy winner took it a step further on his own track, “Not Alike,” when he called out MGK by name, telling him that he doesn’t need to use another artist “if you wanna come at me with a sub-machine gun.” More diss tracks followed, with fans even speculating that the entire thing was staged considering Em and Kelly share a record label and a producer.
With the 30-year-old’s latest album, Tickets to my Downfall, set to be turned into a musical entitled Downfalls High, he has now shared his thoughts on why his previous album, Hotel Diablo, was such a commercial flop. “It was coming off the tail-end of that infamous beef [with Eminem], so no one wanted to give it the time of day,” he told Interview. “It’s like if you make a s***ty movie and then you come out with a great movie right after, but people want to focus on the fact that they hated whatever you just did. What I did in the beef was exactly what it should be, but that project wasn’t welcomed.”
Lucky for MGK, Tickets to my Downfall has performed much better.
