Top 5 Disses on Eminem's Kamikaze

 
Shady doesn’t just save his venom for the album’s closer and Marvel movie tie-in track, he laces pretty much every song on Kamikaze with it. On “Fall”, for which the music video takes inspiration from the 2018 “Venom” film, he once again embraces his inner demons – this time, unleashing them on the supposedly retired rapper turned hip hop commentator and former Slaughterhouse member, Joe Budden. Shady kicks off the second verse by essentially telling Budden to shut up or prepare to get murdered, while also diminishing the rapper’s success and bringing up the domestic abuse charges Budden faced in 2014. Budden’s former Everyday Struggle co-host, DJ Akademiks, also gets called out aggressively.



 
Like many Americans, Marshall Mathers is NOT happy with the country’s current commander-in-chief; a position he made perfectly clear with his 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards cypher verse, “The Storm,” in which he went after the President guns blazing. Not only did he denounce Trump, but also insulted listeners who consider themselves to be fans of both him and Trump. On Kamikaze’s opening track, he revisits the subject, extending an olive branch to those fans who Trump duped and betrayed… before boasting that he’s got the president – who he refers to as Agent Orange – scared enough to send the Secret Service after him, but too intimidated to actually respond. 
 

 
Eminem calls out a number of people by name on this album, though Drake doesn’t seem to be among them. Shady’s music manager Paul Rosenberg has gone on record saying that Eminem is NOT dissing Drake. But, as the album’s skits make perfectly clear, Paul and Marshall don’t always agree ­– and the lyrics on these two songs speak for themselves. First, on “Kamikaze”, Shady addresses someone having “views” before claiming that his are higher – which feels like a clear reference to Drake’s 2016 album, Views. On “Fall”, he apologizes for overshadowing someone on a feature, and the fact that it took “forever” to do so. “Forever” just so happens to be the only Drake song on which Eminem has featured.


 

 
With this album, Eminem appears to have two goals. First, he wants to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’s the greatest rapper ever. Secondly, he wants to make it perfectly clear just how much he HATES mumble rap. Savage and relentless in his takedown of the genre’s distinct delivery style, Em isn’t afraid to namedrop some of its most prominent examples. The chorus of “Not Alike” is an obvious parody of Migos’ “Bad and Boujee”. On album opener “The Ringer”, he quickly dismisses Lil Pump and Lil Xan before dissing all the “mumblin’” rappers by stating that his generation of rappers will “pummel” them, later reiterating this sentiment on “Lucky You”.


 

 
Migos might be the target of Shady’s disdain on the hook of the album’s eighth track, but for his verse, Eminem sets his sights on fellow white rapper Machine Gun Kelly, a.k.a. MGK. From the get-go, he unloads one verbal clip after another. He questions MGK’s legitimacy as a gangster. He calls the Cleveland rapper out for making comments in 2012 about his then-underage daughter. He also accuses Machine Gun of an under-the-radar diss on his Tech N9ne collaboration, “No Reason”. Then, he proceeds to just tear the unconventional young MC apart. Of course, MGK has since fired back with the scathing diss track, “Rap Devil”. How far will this feud go? Only time will tell.