Elliott Wilson recalls XXL magazine beefing with Eminem

Elliott Wilson, the founder and CEO of Rap Radar, has previously worked as editor-in-chief of XXL Magazine, recently sat down with VLAD where he recalled beefing with Eminem in early 2000s and how he managed to get 50 Cent, Eminem and Dr. Dre on the cover of the magazine.

“[When I arrived] Eminem already had a beef with XXL magazine. I inherited his beef. I tried to resolve it. They had already wrote an article before I got there, like question white person running hip-hop. The white MC. So he was offended by that. He was in good rapport with The Source at that time, so he was anti XXL. When I got to XXL, my first mission was resolve this beef with Eminem. Get Eminem on my side but he wouldn’t accept it so then I wrote up and did whole magazine against him because he wouldn’t embrace me yet.” said Elliott Wilson.

Then he continued: “And then he dissed us on The Marshall Mathers album cause the first issue I did put a nasty illustration that I regret to this day, about his mother spanking him, so he’s talking about that in the song. But it’s legendary man. I got dissed on a title track of Marshall Mathers LP which is a classic so… My first issue! And it wasn’t even my attent. Was I trolling Eminem? I don’t think I was. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was trying to get it done [laughs].”

Elliott Wilson then continued talking about the iconic cover story XXL magazine made back in 2003 with 50 Cent, Dr. Dre and Eminem: “I don’t know if you know this Vlad but 50 Cent does not like me. Let’s give 50 Cent all the credit in the world. 50 Cent was the reason I was able to finally resolve this conflict I inherited with Eminem and join the situation. We were supporting 50. I remember going to the office and everybody’s pumping his mixtapes. 50’s the hottest guy at that moment in New York. You could not deny his impact. So, we just started doing these stories on him and just continually putting him in the magazine, continually showing support, we built great rapport with him so we just kept supporting him. So, when he signed to Eminem, we were like ‘oh s–t. Is he gonna cut us off?’ We thought 50 gonna say ‘I can’t f–k with you all. Eminem and those guys don’t f–k with you.’ He ended up do be the bridge to help solve the situation.” he said.

Elliott then continued: “And then what happened was, Benzino made a record dissing Eminem at the same time so I went to have a meeting with Paul Rosenberg to resolve this conflict cause I wanted that 50 Cent cover. So, we had this whole sit down and Paul was like ‘how would you like, Eminem, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent cover?’ I was like ‘this guy is f–king with me.’ I just wanted 50 Cent. He was like ‘you didn’t hear last night? Benzino dropped the diss record.’ I had not heard it. I missed it. So everything led to having that moment. Then Interscope pulled all the advertisements from The Source and gave it to us which empowered us to go on the run that we began.” You can watch the interview below: