Busta Rhymes has made no secret of his admiration of Eminem, and is even willing to call out a collaborator on wax to defend the Detroit rap legend.
In an interview with former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on their All The Smoke podcast, Busta revealed that he was forced to check a fellow artist on a track they recorded together after they made disparaging comments about the self-proclaimed Rap God.
Busta didn’t reveal the identity of said artist, but he did say the record has yet to come out.
“I got a song coming out with an artist that I had to address about his testimonial and opinion on Eminem too. I had to check him on his own song in rhyme form.
“What makes these moments special is when you can be honest on these records. We ain’t gotta front, so don’t out yourself in a situation and then ask me to rhyme with you ’cause I’m going to check you — and you can’t argue with me ’cause I’m the fucking elder statesmen and a timeless great.”
The Flipmode Squad frontman also checked Dr. Umar Johnson over his controversial claim that Eminem can’t be considered one of the greatest rappers of all time because he’s white.
“I’ma keep it a buck: I don’t think nobody can fuck with Eminem,” Busta declared. “I’m sorry, Dr. Umar, stop it. And there’s a lot of shit that Dr. Umar says that I agree with, but this is one particular [topic] that he’s way off the kilt with.”
Watch his comments at the 2:18:30 mark below.
Busta Rhymes and Eminem famously teamed up in 2014 on the song “Calm Down,” which saw the lyrical veterans assert their status as two of the greatest rappers of all time.
Explaining how the heavyweight collaboration came about, Busta told Complex: “After marinating on the record for some time, I felt like this would be an incredible record for Eminem to get on … We left the song with [Em’s manager] Paul Rosenberg but we didn’t actually get any feedback about whether he was going to jump on it.
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“About six weeks passed by, my partner Shaheem Reid reached out to Riggs Morales, who was an A&R at Shady Records at the time. He came by the studio to hear the song, and two weeks later, we finally got a confirmation from Paul that Em had got the beat and that he’s fucking with it.
“A few months passed by, and I got a call from Paul. He wanted to meet me in the studio. He came and played Em’s verse, and I was blown away. What was interesting to me though was that Em did a 42-bar verse. Because we’re known for pretty much fucking everybody up when we get on records with other artists, it became a competitive process.
“I went back and I wrote 50 bars. We then scheduled a mix session for the song and when I got to Detroit, he listened to my verse, heard that it was 50 bars, he went back and turned his 42 bars into a 60-bar verse. At that point I went back and turned my 50-bar verse into a 62-bar verse.
“And then Em made his verse a 64-bar verse. It started off from just doing a dope, high-energy Hip Hop record into us respectfully competing and damn near battling each other.”
