Eminem and Mariah Carey are said to have dated for “six or seven” months around 2002 but more than twenty years later they still have beef.
Slim Shady claims the pair were together after working on her album Charmbracelet, but Mariah has continuously denied they were a celebrity couple. Instead, she said their relationship was strictly professional. The feud was sizzling through Mariah’s relationship and marriage to Nick Cannon, who backed his then-wife. Luckily, we have everything you need to know about the musicians’ beef right here.
Where the Eminem and Mariah Carey beef all began
After their 2001 meeting for what was supposed to be the start of a work-related come-together, Eminem soon started mentioning the music star in his raps. In his song Superman, he said: “What you tryin’ to be? My new wife? / What, you Mariah? Fly through twice.” In another, the lyrics include him saying he would “beg Mariah to take me back” before doing a hard drug.
He later addressed with Rolling Stone and said he “didn’t like her as a person.” Ouch.
The 8 Mile star said: “There’s truth to that. But on the whole personal level, I’m not really feeling it. I just don’t like her as a person.”
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Mariah Carey sang about her beef with Eminem on the album she initially invited him to work on. Although she never called him by his name but rather some harsh words including “a clown” and “a puppet.”
She sings on the song aptly titled Clown: “You should’ve never intimated we were lovers / When you know very well we never even touched each other.
“I gotta break it to ya delicately, dummy / Takin’ my G5 twenty minutes wasn’t nothin’ / but I guess you wouldn’t know, that’s the way I roll.”
Mariah denied to two different TV hosts the stars ever dated.
She told Oprah Winfrey: “I talked to him. I spoke with him a few times, whatever. In terms of having an intimate relationship with men, I can name them all on one hand, and he ain’t on the hand.”
To Larry King, she explained: “I hung out with him, I spoke to him on the phone. I think I was probably with him a total of four times. And I don’t consider that dating somebody.”
The Mariah Carey ‘voicemail’ Eminem played to fans
When performing Clown live in 2003, she brought out an Eminem lookalike on stage, which would later become a somewhat running theme with their feud (at least on Mariah’s part).
However, he played just as dirty as during his concerts at the time, he would play a voicemail which allegedly included Mariah’s voice.
It apparently said: “Why won’t you see me? Why won’t you call me?” Although her reps later denied it was her.
The pair continue to diss each other in their music
In a song with fellow rapper 50 Cent in 2006, one of Eminem’s lyrics included: “Your mind’s on us like mine’s on Mariah. And y’all are just like her, you’re all f***ing liars.”
The 51-year-old talked about his alleged ex on Shade 45 radio and called her a “diva,” saying they weren’t all that compatible.
“Yes, me and Mariah did have a relationship for about a good six, seven months. It didn’t work. I wasn’t really into what she was into; our personalities collided,” he said. “She’s a diva, and I’m a little more regular, I guess.”
Three years later, he once again named her in a song
“Mariah, whatever happened to us? Why did we have to break up?” before calling Nick, whom she married a year earlier a “p****” and wishing him luck with the singer.
This led to Nick, 43, writing online: “I thought we got past the days where white men could spew vulgar obscenities at our beautiful queens and get away with it. So, Miss Marshall, I’m going to make you wish you never spoke my name and regret the ungodly things you said about my wife.”
Mariah Carey then took things back into her own hands. She released what is probably the most well-known part of her beef with Eminem: her song Obsessed. The track came out the same year and features lyrics such as “Oh, why you so obsessed with me (boy, I wanna know) / Lying that you’re sexing me (when everybody knows) / It’s clear that you’re upset with me.”
Though she never mentioned the Without Me rapper, it became clear who the celebrity was talking about. When she released the music video which, much like during her concerts, features an Eminem lookalike.
Eminem hit back but other rappers called him out
Eminem was quick to hit back in his pretty disgusting track The Warning where he raps a response.
He says: “I’m obsessed now, oh gee / Is that supposed to be me in the video with the goatee? / Wow Mariah, didn’t expect you to go balls out.”
However, the song seemed to have gone too far, even for others in the music business. Rappers Ja Rule and Busta Rhymes both called him out.
“Leave Mariah Carey alone,” Busta said, “That’s my friend, man. I don’t even understand why this s-t is resurfacing again. But for whatever it’s worth, I just hope they could be cool.”
“Real talk, there really shouldn’t be any [diss] records being made. … I don’t have to insult a woman,” Ja Rule told SOOH.
Eminem then seemed to express some regret for what he had said on Bagpipes From Baghdad and addressed Nick’s post in an interview on BBC Radio 1
The dad said: “There’s a line on there that was a little harsh. It’s a harsh line. … But it’s like this, the way I look at it: I had no idea he was gonna take it like he took it. I had no idea Nick Cannon was gonna start wildin’ out on me.”
Nick challenged Eminem to a rap battle
In 2016, the year Mariah and Nick filed for a divorce, the presenter and actor challenged Eminem to a rap battle.
He said: “The way the Eminem thing started was that I never had an issue with him. If anything, I’ve been one of his biggest fans, but when another man crosses a line of disrespect, then you got to deal with it.”
However, he later tried to bury his feud with the Grammy-winner in a song of his own.
The lyrics include: “I’m a fan, yo / but first and foremost / I’m a man, though. That 2010 bulls**t, been let that go … Em, right now I can really relate to him / Drug habits all the pain he was in / Saying foul s*** when you don’t know where your baby momma been.”
Though Eminem should probably be apologizing to Mariah Carey over their beef, Nick said it was him getting the apology. They had now quashed their side of things to be civil. He even told Em to “have some fun with it now.”
The dad-of-12 added: “He still in my top five, but I feel like anytime somebody says something … you’ve just gotta be held accountable. If you say something, we gonna have to have this conversation like men. That’s all I wanted.”
However, Eminem ignited it again by calling Nick and “fool” and Mariah a “nutjob” in his song “Lord Above with Fat Joe.
Nick wasn’t happy as he took to Instagram to share the album’s artwork and wrote a message to his frienemy. He said: “Star-studded. He even did some charity work and dug @Eminem out his grave — I mean cave!! LOL. Bring your a** to @MTVWILDNOUT to Battle like a real legend, Grandpa Marshall!!”
Taking another dig at the rapper, Nick said on his radio show on Power 106: “We should change his name from Eminem to Percocet. What’s the pill old people use? We are going to call him Cialis. Bring your walker, get out your wheelchair, Eminem, and pop whatever you want to pop.”
Mariah Carey didn’t write about the beef with Eminem in her memoir
In 2020, ahead of her memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, a source said she wouldn’t be addressing the beef with Eminem but said they’d had a “very toxic relationship.”
“He knows that Mariah is going to say very negative things about him,” the insider claimed.
“He is expecting the onslaught and almost welcomes it. Marshall is stressed out that Mariah is going to say s*** that he was bad in bed or a selfish lover because he has always been very insecure about that. She knows that.”
However, Eminem had nothing to worry about. The Fantasy singer said her music was sufficient when it came to talking about the beef.
The Heartbreaker star said: “There [are] some songs that I can sing in response to that, but I will not do it. … If somebody or something didn’t pertain to the actual meaning of Mariah Carey, as is the title, then they aren’t in the book.”
In 2021, she shared a TikTok using her song Obsessed to participate in the Wipe It Down trend. The video which saw Mariah go from dressed down to full glam. But she couldn’t help but feature an Eminem lookalike again. It was just like the music video she released 12 years earlier.
She cheekily captioned the TikTok: “Just for laughs.”
In the two years since, we’ve not heard a peep from either of them. So maybe, just maybe, they’ve put it to rest?
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