Hip-Hop veteran Cameron F. Gipp, better known by his stage name Big Gipp, who is a funding member of Goodie Mob rap group based in Atlanta, Georgia, consisting of himself, CeeLo Green, Khujo and T-Mo, has recently done an interview with The Art Of Dialogue where shared his thoughts on Jay-Z and Eminem song “Renegade.”
“Eminem had the better verse on ‘Renegade.’ I f–k with Jay-Z. He’s one of the best. Top five solo rappers. But Eminem at that time was a f–king monster. He was eating everybody that stood next to him. Now, what you’re gonna say is what most people are gonna say that ‘I identify more with what Jay-Z said cause that’s my life and that’s where I come from. That’s my background.’ Okay. That’s right. But at the same time you gotta look at Eminem and say ‘look at the kids that are looking up to him, look like him and got his background.’ That takes him off into the middle America and a lot of places that we probably wouldn’t reach.” said Big Gipp
Then h continued: “So, if you look at the demographics I’m sure that Eminem took Jay-Z into a lot of places and lot of households that he had never been in just because he was on a song with Eminem. So, you gotta look at both sides of it. Cause Em had already proved his thing by doing his thing as a battle rapper and then going to New York and getting with 50 Cent and being on all these remixes that was going on during them times . He had already earned respect from everybody. But I’m talking about the people who was not into hip-hop and wasn’t into streets like that or might not know about Jay-Z but they knew Eminem because at that time Eminem was like a planet on his own. Nobody had seen this before.”
“Yeah, we have seen the Beastie Boys, they are the gods. One of the best rap groups of all time but nobody has ever been looked at as a lyrical giant coming from Em’s community into Em. Em was the first to say ‘I’ma get into that battle rap, I’ma get into real strategic rap and earn my respect.’ And the biggest thing about battle rappers during that time was like ‘yeah you can battle rap but you can’t come up with a song.’ And Em proved them all wrong. He changed a battle rapper into a rapper that now understands song format and then he became the monster. And that was just under the getting with the right producer. King Dr. Dre. Once Eminem got an actual producer with him that could think about what the track was, how and where we’re going with the hook, he became a force do deal with.”
“If you were to put the same light on Em, he really represented his community the same as Jay represented his community at the time of them doing that record. But as far as influence, s–t, to me Em came out as being as great or even as better rapper than Jay, technically, on that record. As far as it being his record, he took Jay-Z into households that Jay-Z wasn’t in at that time. He made Jay-Z cooler. There is no way Jay-Z made him cool.” Big Gipp added.
In another part of the interview, Big Gipp also said that Eminem is the closest rapper to 2Pac. You can watch the interview below: