Eminem said he had to 'destroy' Machine Gun Kelly without 'making him bigger'

Eminem once said he had to ‘destroy’ Machine Gun Kelly without making him ‘bigger’ during the peak of their beef.

The feud between both rappers began all the way back in 2012, when MGK - real name Colson Baker - called Eminem’s daughter Hailie ‘hot as f**k’.

This clearly didn’t sit well with Slim Shady, who released the track ‘Not Alike’ in 2018 in which he insulted MGK, who then responded with the diss track ‘Rap Devil’.

Eminem – real name Marshall Mathers - threw shots once again at MGK.

After both artists released diss tracks targeted at one another, Eminem sat down with hip hop aficionado Sway Calloway to explain everything that had gone down up to that point.

HipHopDX

The chart-topping rapper said he initially didn’t want to respond to MGK’s diss because it would give his arch nemesis more exposure.

"You've got people who don't do anything and are just critiquing it," he said. "So I sat back and I'm like, 'Ok, that's fine,' people can talk crazy about me, that's fine, they should express themselves and they have a right to.

"But I also get to say whatever the f**k I want about you now."

The 8 Mile star said he didn’t hear about MGK’s comments about his daughter until much later, telling Sway: “Just for the record the thing that was going on that he was saying about my daughter, I didn't even know about that until literally like a year and a half later.

"It never hit my radar. And then one day you go down the fucking worm hole of YouTube, so I see 'Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem's daughter', whatever. What the f*ck."

@machinegunkelly/Instagram

He went on: "So I click on it... he starts doing a press run, basically, about Hailie. I'm like, 'What the f*ck? Yo, my man better chill.'"

Eminem addressed claims that he banned MGK from his radio station Shade 45. “That's not why I dissed him, the reason I dissed him is actually a lot more petty that that. The reason I dissed him is because he got on - first he said, 'I'm the greatest rapper alive since my favourite rapper banned me from Shade 45,' or whatever he said, right? “Like I'm trying to hinder his career.”

Eminem added: "It's like, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up. Now, now I'm in this fucking weird thing because I'm like I gotta answer this motherf**ker.

"And every time I do that it makes that person - as irrelevant as people say I am in hip-hop - I make them bigger by getting into this thing where I'm like, 'I wanna destroy him, but I also don't wanna make him bigger,' because now you're a f**king enemy."

Eminem’s interview was uploaded on 13 September, 2018 and he released his response diss, ‘Killshot’ the day after.

@hailiejade/Instagram

MGK was asked about his comments about Hailie – who was 16 while he was 22 – in an interview in 2015, telling Hot 97’s Ebro In The Morning radio show: “Pictures of [Hailie] had came out, and I'm like, what, 20 years old, 21 at the time?

"I said 'She's beautiful, but all respect due. Eminem is king'. What's wrong with that? Is there a 15-year age gap where I'm a creep for that? I was 21, dawg. Certain people took it, and ran with it and hyped it up."

Now it seems all parties have moved on - MGK is dating Megan Fox, despite break up rumours, and Hallie is engaged to her long-term boyfriend Evan McClintock.