Eminem has revealed his motivation for opening up a rap beef with Machine Gun Kelly by dissing him on his new album Kamikaze.

The 45 year old hip-hop megastar has been interviewed by Sway this week, and he went into some detail about why the lyric war came about. When Eminem dropped his surprise 10th album Kamikaze back on August 31st, he addressed Machine Gun Kelly’s comments about his daughter on his track ‘Not Alike’, spitting back at him: “And I’m talking to you but you already know who the fuck you are, Kelly / I don’t use sublims and sure as fuck don’t sneak-diss / But keep commenting on my daughter Hailie.”

That then led to MGK’s reply track ‘Rap Devil’ – poking fun at Em’s 2013 single ‘Rap God’. However, their beef actually extends back to 2012, when MGK tweeted about Eminem’s then-16 year old daughter, calling her “hot as f***”.

EminemEminem hit out at MGK on 'Not Alike'

“One day, you know, you go down a fucking wormhole on YouTube or whatever. I see Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem’s daughter or whatever. I’m like ‘what the fuck?” I click on it…he starts doing a press run, basically, about Hailie. I’m like “what the fuck? Yo, my man better chill’,” he explained this week.

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However, annoyed as he was about MGK’s mentioning of his daughter, Em said that the reason he made ‘Not Alike’ was “more petty”.

“The reason I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that,” he continued. “The reason that 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.”

Machine Gun KellyMachine Gun Kelly then responded with 'Rap Devil'

“I don’t give a fuck about your career. You think I actually fucking think about you? You know how many fucking rappers are better than you? You’re not even in the fucking conversation.”

Now, Eminem is in a position where he’s not sure whether to reply or just not give MGK the oxygen of publicity by stoking it further.

“Now I’m in this fuckin’ weird thing, because I’m like, ‘I gotta answer this motherfucker’,” he said. “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 want to destroy him. But I also don’t want to make him bigger’. You know what I’m saying? Because now you’re a f***ing enemy’ […] I’ll leave it at that. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do at this point right now.”

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