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It has been over a year since the diss track war between Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly erupted. Now, Yelawolf tells the story of how he may have involuntarily been involved in the rap beef between Eminem and MGK.
In March, Yelawolf released his album Trunk Muzik 3 under Shady Records. The LP includes the song Rowdy that featuring Machine Gun Kelly, which rubbed many hip-hop fans the wrong way. Music fans criticized Yelawolf for being disloyal to Eminem for having MGK on the track, who was involved in a rap beef. Now, Yelawolf sets the record straight and explains how he was always loyal to Marshal Mathers.
On Wednesday, Yelawolf did a YouTube interview with HipHopDX and explained how the collaboration initially started. Yelawolf and Machine Gun Kelly had their own grievances on who started throwing water in moshpits first.
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In 2011, Machine Gun Kelly boasted about throwing water at live shows. “We have really good eye contact, which I think is key in shows,” MGK told Columbus Alive. “And we throw water like we’re f*cking Brett Favre. Even if you’re in the back, you’re going to get wet. Or a kid’s going to punch you in the face, and you’ll be like, ‘Damn, that was crazy.’”
Yelawolf said a “young super hot-headed” MGK “made a comment about Warped Tour” about how people shouldn’t throw water and start moshpits because that’s his “sh*t.” Yelawolf continues, “I was on Warped Tour, I took it personally,” believing MGK’s comments were about him. “Who the f*ck are you talking about, me?”
“It started a thing, but our fans took it way further than we did. I just let that ride for a while,” Yelawolf said. The Alabama rapper said eventually he and MGK became labelmates at Interscope. Then both rappers were in Nashville, and a mutual friend convinced Yelawolf to go to a Machine Gun Kelly show. The two bonded after the concert.
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Later, Yelawolf and DJ Paul had a track that they both thought would be perfect to feature MGK and Eminem on it. “I was like, ‘Marshall will never go for that,’ but I’ll hit him up,” Yelawolf remembers.
“I laid my verse, sent it to MGK, got MGK’s back to me, and I sent that to Marshall… crickets,” Yelawolf explained. “I didn’t hear nothing, I took that as he didn’t want to do it, he wasn’t into it.”
“And then some months later… BOOM. He drops this diss record on MGK. Kamikaze, no one knew was coming. I didn’t know he had a record in the bag. I didn’t know he was even working on an album,” Yelawolf said. By that time, the diss track war was in full effect with Killshot and Rap Devil.
Yelawolf added, “So when it dropped I had this song in my pocket, so MGK had it also to say, ‘Well since we’re going through this, don’t do that.'”
Yelawolf asked Eminem if it was cool for him to release the collabo with MGK, and Slim gave his blessing. “Man, f*ck it, dude run it, people need to hear that, people wanna hear that,” Yelawolf said Marshall told him.
Yelawolf said if push came to shove in the rap beef, “obviously I’d side with Shady.”
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[HNHH]