Canibus has recently sat down with Math Hoffa on his My Expert Opinion podcast where the former king of the underground hip-hop recalled first time meeting Eminem at his video shoot and how the beef affected his personality.
“When I met Eminem for the first time, it was at my video shoot for “I Honor U.” Clef told me he was coming. I had heard of him. I heard a lot about him. I knew he rocked with The Outsidaz and stuff. I knew he got busy. I had no problems with meeting him. At that time, it was a newborn on the set. The label was spanking us. Two weeks before that to say this newborn in the video. When that newborn gets here, they are charging us with $400 over sag every minute for the baby being there so they spanked everybody prior to all that. When Eminem came out of the bench glitter wagon, he was with Jimmy Iovine and when he came out: “NEWBORN ON THE SET, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT TO DO” so I was already under that pressure. I remember that part.” said Canibues.
Then he continues: “Em pushed up like ‘Yo, Canibus I just wanna work with you. I wanna do something with you.’ I was told right before he got there, like five minutes before he got there, he ghostwrote The Ripper Strikes Back [LL Cool J’s diss song towards Canibus]. Back then, I didn’t know what was gong on. I had to rely on what I was being told. Especially if it came from the source that I trusted or I thought it was reliable. At the end of the day, it was not reliable source cause he didn’t write it. So my conversation with Em was like ‘Yo, why did you write that’ he said he was embarrassed and that he didn’t write it. But I had destroyed the opportunity to ever really work with him again because he really was genuine about how he felt was going on. In my mind I was like, ‘why would you do that, why would you want to work so bad with me and you ghostwrote that?!’ I didn’t know, so that destroyed everything.”
“And I wisened up. He get busy. At that time, I was in that lane getting busy on the mic. He also had this thing where the stuff that he was talking about everybody wanted to hear that. Everybody wanted to hear what he said, how he said. There is rhyme where he says, in ‘Square Dance,’ He said, ‘Two trailer park girls go round the outside, Round the outside, round the outside.’ That was the rhyme I had said from ‘Box Cutta’ Blade Runna’. So he was doing things like that. Saying things in the rhyme that was driving me crazy. He was driving me nuts!”
“I was in Amsterdam, in the Red-light district and I was in the room with Shorty and she ran over the radio and as I’m listening to music and then I hear Em’s voice come on and I feel like he’s talking about me! [Everybody Laughs]. That song was award-winning song, for you and the rest of the world that song was incredible. Songwriting all that. Anyway, I don’t care what non of you say, that record was talking to me because that’s what happened when I was rude to him and then he took his style and his ability how he writes in his mind and he turned it into that. That’s what was driving me crazy. I created the monster. It was my fault. But at that time I was not looking at it like that. I was looking at it like ‘yo, my label needs to do more with me to push my s–t.’ I didn’t understand that there was an institution involved in that whole craze. It was a tsunami.”
“And that Stan record. I don’t care what you talking about. I brought him back to life. That was my way of writing back to say ‘hey look I shouldn’t said what I said but you know what? I brought Stan back to life, come on tour with me. That was my way of saying ‘yo, don’t kill Stan off.’ and whoever was listening they were mad that I was trying to bring him back to life.”
“I never talked to Em since then. A lot of people throw gas on it but the truth about it is that I tried to clean it up in different ways. It almost seemed like the public liked me better as an angry artist. Me saying angry things. They did not want to hear me when I did the song Channel Zero or these kind of stuff. So the truth about it is, I just really needed a hug, man.” – Canibus added.
You can watch Canibus’ interview below:
