Icewear Vezzo has hit out at Benzino for dragging him into his reignited feud with Eminem.
In his diss song aimed at Slim Shady called “Rap Elvis”, the former publisher of The Source magazine referenced past comments made by Vezzo.
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Benzino rapped on the track: “Icewear Vezzo said that Em don’t be showing the city love/ Why you ain’t got no words for him, huh? He in your city, bruh!”
Vezzo responded to the reference on Wednesday (January 31), saying in a video posted on Instagram: “Say, Benzino, it’s all gangsta, ya heard? I did fed time with your big brother. But check it out, I don’t think it made sense that you brought me up in a diss song for a few reasons.
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“Number one, I don’t second nothing you said. And number two, I’m never going against a n-gga from my city for a n-gga from another city. I don’t go against the grain, we don’t move like that. I think you got the wrong impression of Detroit, Michigan and of who I am.”
He also defended his aforementioned remarks about Eminem and praised the rap legend as a “top five lyricist dead or alive.”
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“Holmes ain’t gotta make no diss songs to say nothing back to me ’cause I ain’t disrespect or discredit who he is,” he added. “What he did might never get done again. Holmes top five lyricists dead or alive. That shit not even arguable or debatable. And he put n-ggas on from his area.”
Vezzo’s comments were co-signed by Royce Da 5’9″, who posted the video on his own Instagram page along with a saluting face emoji.
Icewear Vezzo’s comments about Eminem came in an interview with HipHopDX in 2020, and were interpreted by some as a slight against his fellow Detroit native.
“For us, it was like Eminem was out of touch, so he wasn’t anybody we could actually relate to,” he said. “We were never in touch with Eminem. In the hood, in our ghettos and shit, back when he first came out, yeah, [Eminem] was like a hero for us.
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“So we expected to see him, to be able to touch him, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we got somebody that got out from Detroit. This about to go down, he opened the gates up.’ But it didn’t go that way.”
He added: “We always wanted Em to play the position that Royce Da 5’9″ played, but he doesn’t, so he’s not a hero for us no more. Royce Da 5’9″ is like the president of the Marshall Mathers Foundation, and he’s from the hood.
“You’re able to see him, he going to come out. He fucked with n-ggas and he reached out, he checked on us, he’d pull up to the studio, he’d pull up to the club.”
Three years later, any tension between Eminem and Icewear Vezzo was dispelled when they met backstage at a 50 Cent concert in the Motor City. While sharing a photo of them together on Instagram, the Rich Off Pints rapper called Em his “biggest inspiration.”
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Meanwhile, Eminem’s feud with Benzino reignited last week after the “Lose Yourself” rapper dissed his longtime rival on his song “Doomsday Pt. 2”.
Benzino initially fired back with “Vulturious” before releasing “Rap Elvis” on Wednesday.
