Eminem’s place among the all-time greats in a predominantly Black culture continues to be challenged, this time by controversial activist and motivational speaker Dr. Umar.
Clips from an upcoming episode of The Joe Budden Podcast featuring the internet personality have been making the rounds online, among which is his race-centered critique of the Detroit rapper’s status in Hip Hop.
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“This is going to my African fundamentalism,” he prefaced his tirade. “No non-African can ever be the best of anything African. It is an insult to the ancestors, it is an insult to the race and it is an insult to every Black person.
“We gotta stop naming non-African people as being the best of any aspect of our cultural power because it is an insult … I can acknowledge Eminem’s talent. But for you to put him at the top, that’s white supremacy.”
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The 49-year-old also made sure to namedrop some examples of “non-Africans” who have made a name for themselves in the culture he insists must remain within the control of one ethnicity.
“I don’t see Eminem building no schools and hospitals,” Umar said. “I don’t see DJ Khaled building no schools and hospitals. I don’t see DJ Vlad building no damn [inaudible] and supermarkets.”
A number of rappers, from Lord Jamar to Melle Mel, have cited Em’s skin color as being the main reason he got as big as he did. In a rare cover story with XXL last year, Slim Shady opened up about his iconic career and how it started out a bit rocky due to how he was and still is perceived.
“When things started happening for me, I was getting a lot of heat, being a white rapper, and XXL wrote something about that,” he said. “I remember going to one of those newsstands in New York when the magazine had just started out, and I bought that and a couple of other rap magazines. I flipped to the last page first and XXL was dissing me. What the fuck?”
In the aforementioned issue, XXL had written a piece about Eminem being a white rapper, holding no punches in their criticisms of him; the 8 Mile star didn’t take too kindly to the insults.
“I don’t even know if I read the whole article — I was used to reading things like that about me — but it hurt because I felt they didn’t know me to make that kind of judgment,” he added. “Coming up, I had to deal with that a lot. I wanted to be respectful because what I do is Black music. I knew I was coming into it as a guest in the house. And XXL, The Source, Rap Pages and VIBE were Hip Hop bibles at the time.
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“I understood, at the same time, everybody’s perception of a white guy coming into Hip Hop and all of a sudden things start happening for him. So, if XXL would’ve even had a conversation with me, maybe they would’ve understood me more.”
