Conflict has been at the core of hip-hop since its inception.

Built on a long and storied tradition of testing your mettle against the next artist through battling, having the nerve to step up and bet on your own prowess in the face of stiff competition is as central to the hip-hop mindset as it ever was.

But what happens when the attempts to take on one of the most esteemed figures in the game leaves you as a laughing stock in the eyes of many and a mortal enemy to his most impassioned and notoriously vocal fans?

Well, through the tale of Machine Gun Kelly’s ill-fated run-in with Eminem, we know that the answer is that hip-hop becomes such an inhospitable environment for you that the only option is to set sale for a new genre entirely.

So, let’s break down everything that led to the leader of the E-S-T Crew leaving the R-A-P game and embarking on a self-imposed exile after sustaining Shady’s “Killshot” and discuss:

How Eminem Turned MGK Into A Pop Singer

 “That’s My Idol”

Born Colson Baker, the Cleveland-bred artist now known as Machine Gun Kelly had been rapping on the underground since 2006 before breaking out into the mainstream with his 2012 debut album Lace Up, MGK found himself among the ranks of Bad Boy, as, in Diddy’s words, he “always knew he’d be a star.”

Right off the bat, MGK garnered success, with his debut album reaching number four on the Billboard Charts.

The young Bad Boy signed-MGK’s rockstar style antics and infamous party habits would help with his notoriety, and according to MGK that is evidence of his interest in rock music all along, for what it’s worth.

Other than that, the fact that Colson was Caucasian and was forthcoming about his tough upbringing in his lyrics meant that he also garnered a lot of Eminem comparisons.

For many of the earlier years of his career, this was no problem as MGK was a self confessed lifelong fan of Shady.

Speaking to Montreality after the release of Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP II, Colson discussed the devotion that he felt towards Shady and the depths of his fandom in his younger years:

“I’m scared to listen to it, , cause that’s my idol. That’s my idol and I feel like he’s said all he has to say. Of course I’mma love anything he does, I would hope people would be the same way with me. So, have I listened to it? No. Do I want to listen to it? Yes. I’ve wanted to listen to it the second I heard it was getting recorded. I’m scared to make that step, cause I don’t ever wanna look at my idol like (sigh). In high school and middle school, I had an Eminem poster on my wall — MGK on Montreality– 0:20

However, just four years on from the release of that record, Machine Gun Kelly would be embroiled in a bitter feud with his idol and if you ask him, the dispute arose from a seemingly innocuous tweet that pushed Shady’s buttons and would eventually get him in trouble.

Back in 2012, the young rapper took to Twitter to proclaim that “Ok so I just saw a picture of Eminem’s daughter and I have to say… she is hot as f**k. In the most respectful way possible, cuz Em is king.”

Talk about a backhanded compliment if you’ve ever heard one.

Although he was happy to express his fealty to Shady as the ruler of the game, everybody knows that putting the name of Haillie Mathers in your mouth is a cardinal sin for a rapper.

The Reign of The Rap God

Over the years, Eminem has garnered a fearsome reputation among his fellow rappers.

Not just for his adept wordplay and multisyllabic patterns, but for the venom that he can dispense in their direction in a moment’s notice.

After all, his run-in with MGK wouldn’t be the first time that he’d ostensibly chased an artist from the frontlines from the genre

Alongside belittling Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon, Em severely diminished Benzino’s credibility at the height of their feud, in arguably the first major warning sign that you do NOT want to trade bars with Eminem unless your last name is Carter or Duckworth.

Shady’s “Nail In The Coffin” diss to Boston rapper Benzino was a blistering tour-de-force of life-altering one-liners that took all of Benzino’s supposed advantages like street credibility, being the owner of the popular Source Magazine, and claim that he would put hands on Eminem’s mom… and turned them into laughably pathetic disadvantages to be used as tools in Eminem’s hands:

“Slap my mom! Slap the f**k out of her!
She can’t sue you, she wouldn’t get a buck out of ya…
If you was really sellin’ coke, well, then what the f**k
You stop for, dummy? If you slew some crack
You’d make a lot more money than you do from rap!”

Whew, and that was Eminem ten YEARS before MGK decided to come after him.

Additionally, Eminem lyrically marooned Ja Rule off on an island of irrelevance with “Hailie’s Revenge” and other well-timed off the mic chess moves in the mid-2000’s.

While Shady initially tried to stay out of the feud between the Murder Inc. stalwart and his then-protege 50 Cent, the minute that Ja mentioned his daughter in a derogatory way, there had to be repercussions.

Or as Marshall put it in “Like Toy Soldiers”:

“There’s a certain line you just don’t cross, and he crossed it.

I heard him say Hailie’s name on a song and I just lost it.”

With all of that said, let’s move onto what would possess MGK to meddle with a man of the musical stature of Marshall Mathers, but if you yourself are an artist or potential rapper who would like to learn some of Eminem’s “insider secrets” on how to rap battle and diss your opponents at the level of a Shady, click HERE to check out our Rap Battle Bootcamp where teach Eminem-level diss tactics and have a bonus interview with rap battle legend Corey Charron from MTV’s Wild’n Out and King of The Dot.

The First Shot Fired

Despite the fact that he was already playing with fire, it was MGK that arguably fired the first shot in this lyrical war.

Released in 2018, MGK utilized his guest verse on Tech N9NE’s “No Reason” to lambast Shady for labeling himself as a deity in the hip-hop world, spitting “

“I pop cherries and popstars, you popsicles is not hard

Popped in on the top charts out the cop car

To remind y’all you just rap, you’re not Gods

And I don’t care who got bars”

Unfortunately for MGK, Em got word of this at a time when he was feeling particularly motivated to take on all comers and when he released his surprise album, Kamikaze, later that same year, he had some choice words for the rapper on “Not Alike”:

“If you wanna come at me with a sub, Machine Gun

And I’m talkin’ to you, but you already know who the (expletive) you are, Kelly

I don’t use sublime and sure as (expletive) don’t sneak-diss

But keep commenting on my daughter Hailie.”

For those that didn’t catch it, Eminem is doing a play on words known as a “homonym” or as we call it at How To Rap… a sound-alike where is using the name “R. Kelly” the famous singer who was jailed for being attracted to younger women, and the sentence “who you ARE, Kelly” as in MGK…

Since MGK was talking about how he was seemingly attracted to Eminem’s young daughter, again like R. Kelly…

(MGK should’ve known it wasn’t a good idea to bark up this tree)

Now, four days on from that track’s release date, MGK would do the unthinkable and take some time out from his touring cycle to send a diss track in Shady’s direction.

Entitled “Rap Devil”, the track saw a fiery MGK decry Em as an out of touch and embittered old man.

Now, again we have to shoot MGK some bail here and say that “Rap Devil” was a solid diss, even a good diss if it wasn’t against one of the greatest if not the greatest rapper of all time.

It had several angles, including painting Eminem as essentially a uncoordinated hermit who talks tough on record but won’t leave his house, and even had objectively funny sections like:

I am the prodigy
How could I even look up to you? You ain’t as tall as me
5’8″ and I’m 6’4″, seven punches hold your head still
Last time you saw 8 Mile was at home on a treadmill

The problem was and is: he wasn’t dissing just your mid-tier lean-sipping trap rapper or someone on the coming.

He was dissing one of the greatest rap artists of all time, and as MGK clearly knew, somebody who would use his own lines against him. People forget that Eminem came to prominence first and foremost as a rap battler, winning 2nd place in the prestigious Rap Olympics back in the 1990s.

Additionally, as Eminem would exploit mercilessly throughout his response, “Rap Devil” had numerous admonitions that Shady was, in MGK’s words ON THE RECORD, “The GOAT”, “in everybody’s top 10” and “had an Oscar”.

Why, Colson, why?

In any case, “Rap Devil” initially did make some serious waves in the culture.

Once it set social media alight, MGK explained his motivations, declaring that “I’m standing up for not just myself, but my generation. im doing the same s**t you did back in ur day. life is still real on my side, and i had to take time from the grind to defend myself from someone i called an idol. love, Rap Devil.”

 Shady Takes Aim

After he took aim at Shady in such a scathing fashion, the world waited with baited breath for Em’s next move.

But before he’d mount up with another retort, he outlined exactly what MGK did that managed to invoke such a strong response out of Em in the first place.

“The thing that was going on where he was saying the s**t about my daughter, I didn’t even know about that until like a year and a half later. It never hit my radar. Then, one day, you go down the wormhole of YouTube. I see “Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem’s daughter. Then he starts doing a press run basically, about Haillie. I’m like… The reason I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that,” -Em

“The reason that I dissed him is because he got on — first he said, ‘I’m the greatest rapper alive since my favorite rapper banned me from Shade 45′ or whatever he said, right? Like I’m trying to hinder his career.

I don’t give a f**k about your career. You think I actually f**king think about you? You know how many f**king rappers are better than you?

You’re not even in the f**king conversation. I don’t care if you blow or if you don’t blow, it doesn’t matter to me. But then when you get on Tech N9Ne’s album and you start sending shots and people start hitting me up.

I listen to it, like nah he’s not dissing me. Then, I get a screenshot from Twitter that says “something I had to get off my chest, you just rap, you not god.”

This was on the heels of the freestyle he’d just did about Shade 45, it’s like, shut the f**k up. Now, now, I’m in this weird thing where I’m like, I gotta answer this mother*****r. As irrelevant as people say I am, it makes them bigger when I get into this thing where I’m like, I want to destroy him, but I also don’t want to make him bigger- — Eminem talks to Sway. 2:40

After he’d ultimately determined that MGK’s provocations Em, who’d soon claim that he had to “give him a career to destroy it” on the blistering diss track “Killshot”.

A song which smashed YouTube records for the most streams in one day, the track presented an Em that was full of vitality and within minutes, fans were already declaring that MGK’s career as we know it was D.O.A.

From the outset, Eminem had done what he had done time and time again to lyrically crucify his previous opponents like Benzino and Ja Rule, using their own supposed advantages as the bread and butter to feed them as their last meal to their musical execution:

“Wait, you just dissed me? I’m perplexed
Insult me in a line, compliment me on the next
Damn, I’m really sorry you want me to have a heart attack
Was watchin’ 8 Mile on my NordicTrack
Realized I forgot to call you back
Here’s that autograph for your daughter, I wrote it on a Starter cap”

The multi-layered “response to your punchlines AND wittier way of saying your own joke” style of rap shown here is infused throughout “Killshot”.

He is commenting on the fact MGK repeatedly complimented Eminem on the track, responded specifically to a diss in “Rap Devil” about Shady having a heart attack…

While ALSO rhyming NordicTrack about the “the last time you saw 8 Mile was on a treadmill” bar from MGK…

AND wrapping it up with a play one of Marshall’s own classic songs “Stan”, where he mentioned autographing a hat for a fan on a “starter cap”… which also is inline with the original rhyme scheme that MGK introduced!

Needless to say the rest of the track was not good for Colson.

Satisfied with his apparent victory, Em refused to perform the track on the grounds that it might further bolster MGK’s profile.

Em- I would, but I don’t want to give that c***sucker any more f*****g light.”

Later that night, MGK responded by tweeting “Ay Eminem you made the right decision not dropping that weak song in concert and putting everyone to sleep.”

If you asked MGK at the time, he was anything but out of the battle as he, alongside pundits such as Ebro and Charlamagne, initially claimed he won

2:55- I thought Rap Devil was better than Killshot, I guess I’m in the minority because people been giving me flak.

3:17- Killshot was a leg shot. Rap Devil, we’re talking about facts, you want to talk man buns? Answer the facts. You want to talk about a hairstyle I wore for a movie? A blockbuster movie? And a ten episode Showtime series called Roadies. I’m an actor homie, how disconnected are you?

I wanted equal playing grounds. Let’s also say it like it is, You took two weeks, I took two days. You used a Ronny J track, I used a Ronny J track. You used a million dollar studio, I used a dressing room before soundcheck- MGK on The Breakfast Club (1:50)

Even with the wounds that he’d endured, MGK continued to defend his honor and insisted that Shady truly had attempted to stifle his career.

What Eminem said wasn’t true was that he didn’t make a call in regards to the the daughter situation, that was false. Jimmy Iovine and Puff conference called me at nine in the morning, along with several other people and that was a conversation that happened at 3 in the morning the previous night. Em lied- 0:33 (same interview).

No matter what the Cleveland rapper’s outlook may have been, it didn’t help the fact that as far as many fans were concerned he’d been consigned to the genre’s trash heap.

Colson’s Crisis of Meaning

In a conversation with Dave Franco for Interview Magazine, MGK spoke of the lukewarm response to his last attempt at a hip-hop project in Hotel Diablo,

That’s why the project was ironically my best received one, because it was the most effortless, with the least outside influence.”

“As a hip-hop album, it’s flawless front to back, and also a hint at the evolution of how I went into a pop-punk album.

But it was coming off the tail-end of that infamous beef (with Eminem). So no one wanted to give it the time of day…

What I did in the beef was exactly what it should be, but that project wasn’t welcomed…

The next album came from already feeling like I’d counted out, so I didn’t even care what the public was going to think.

As he touched on in that conversation, MGK would soon depart from the world of hip-hop entirely and in doing so, yielded his greatest commercial success.

While he’d always incorporated influences from rock into his world, the news that MGK had teamed up with Travis Barker of Blink 182 to craft a “pop punk” album was initially mocked, with a video of him dancing on the table at Interscope’s Office was portrayed as an act of cringe-inducing desperation.

Alongside the memes, the prevailing narrative around his abrupt shift in direction was that Em had rid hip-hop of MGK and that he’d been forced to seek refuge in another genre to escape him.

But, the rapper-turned-rocker, suggested that it happened organically and by the time that it released, it was hard to dispute that it’d been a shrewd decision on his part as the record, Tickets To My Downfall, would break down previously impenetrable barriers for him in terms of success.

The record culminated in his first number one album and all at once, it seemed like his fortunes had been overhauled once and for all.

“There was probably a crossroads in the middle of making this album where the title would have lived up to the reality”, he told NME after its release. “I think the universe caught on to me wanting to make a change. It was like: ‘Maybe we won’t make this a reality; maybe we’ll make this ironic.’ Instead of the downfall, go ahead and have the biggest rise of your f**king life.”

With MGK now firmly out of his territory, it seemed like Shady was willing to let bygones be bygones.

On the track “Unaccommodating” from 2021’s Music To Be Murdered By, Em clarified where he stood on the matter:

But when they ask me is the war finished with MGK? Of course it is

I cleansed him of his mortal sins, I’m God and the Lord forgives even the devil worshippers

I’m moving on but you know your scruples are gone when you’re born with Lucifer’s horns

But while Em could bask in a sense of closure, the beef was evidently still an albatross around his neck.

In the years since the feud began to die down, Eminem fans have continually besieged MGK’s social media to remind him that he’d been bested by Shady on every single post.

At times, the world’s enduring fascination with the incident has led to public incidents for MGK and on one occasion, he even destroyed a fan’s autograph when em’s name was mentioned.

Clip- Paparazzi- Have you talked to Eminem since you guys’ beef?

(MGK loses it, storms off)

In another instance, he was apparently attacked by a Shady fan in North Carolina.

Game, Set, Match

Soon, it seemed like MGK was officially done with both the discourse around his run-in with Shady and rapping as a whole.

As now, he’d finally found a lane where he believed that his artistic potential and personality could be capitalized on in a way that he believed hip-hop simply never wanted from him.

“Hip-hop is such a pit-bull industry, meaning you want to be the toughest one in the cage”, he told Interview.

“Especially during those times. Now there’s this beautiful vulnerability that everyone’s expressing, with artists like Juice WRLD, rest in peace, and Lil Peep, rest in peace. I was vulnerable in my writing, but people didn’t look past my image. Now, the image and the lyrics kind of meet in the middle.

My fifth album is my most well-received, my highest-selling, my biggest debut. That doesn’t make any sense in the history of how musicians usually come out”, he continued.

“Your first or second album, for the most part, is your best work, or your highest-selling work. That is the peak of the fans interest in you, because that’s you spilling your whole life. I was more motivated by the fact that no one understood me every single time an album dropped. I would just sit there like, ‘What am I missing?’ The chemicals in my formula weren’t right, because I wasn’t fully open yet.

I don’t know how I would’ve handled it if this project had failed. We would’ve seen a much different person after this, and that person would’ve sunk very fast. I would’ve written myself off and I would’ve been like, ‘You’re a f**king failure.’ I think I would’ve shut down.”

Suddenly taken from the last chance saloon and into a new boom period for his career, MGK, who has now largely outran the shadow of Eminem by leaving hip-hop behind, is being asking in what he’s achieved as a pop punk artist.

“I get that people are saying: ‘How the f**k did Machine Gun Kelly make the f**king biggest rock record of the year?” he relayed to NME. “I get that concept sucks for some people, and it may not have been your choice — but it f**king happened.”

After the release of 2020’s Tickets To My Downfall, MGK was playing bigger arenas than ever.

A graduation into superstar status that would eventually lead to his second number one album with 2022’s Mainstream Sellout, MGK may be flourishing now that he’s formally armed with a guitar, but he’s routinely refuted the idea that his tenure in hip-hop is over once and for all.

“I think that I’m doing something that hasn’t been seen yet and is unusual in the way that people don’t know how to categorize it so it’s been seen as I’m leaving or departing something or doing this…. But it’s the same when I look back at Jamie [Foxx[ and I’m like, how crazy is it that he was this insane piano player but also this great vocalist and comedian who also is an actor, who also had a number one record. It’s like, we don’t give him his flowers yet, because we don’t know what to call them. MGK during promo interview for Project Power- 1:03- (via HipHopDx)

With Mainstream Sellout featuring numerous features from the likes of Lil’ Wayne, Gunna and Young Thug, it could be argued that now that the dust from his feud with Em has began to settle, he could perhaps begin to make inroads towards the genre once more.

But, whatever happens from here, MGK is now adamant that when he’s an OG in the game, he’ll be conducting himself in a manner that is far different from Slim Shady.
Howard Stern — Was Eminem a hero to you?

MGK- For sure.

Howard- The guy’s a great rapper. Does it personally pain you that you have this feud with this guy?

MGK- I’m asleep on my tour bus and he releases an album with three songs about me. What am I supposed to do? Just roll over and go back to sleep? Just respect the fight, that’s it.

The guy down the street has money, this fool has wealth beyond…. I’m just a different type though man, I’m all about this (mimes putting hand on shoulder). I’m all about putting my arm around people, I’m not with doing this to people. So, I can’t relate. The last thing I want to be is an angry legend- MGK on the Howard Stern show

After a lifetime as an MC, MGK made the transition to a rocker just as Shady’s commands meant that hip-hop finally discredited him once and for all.

But when you consider that he’s now logging six figure sales numbers and selling out stadiums the world over, there is a case to be made that his smiting by the self-proclaimed rap god was a gift and a curse all at once.