Nick Cannon and Eminem have infamously traded shots numerous times over the years. Eminem, who allegedly dated Cannon’s ex-wife Mariah Carey for six months, dissed the former couple on the Relapse track “Bagpipes From Baghdad” in 2009, and Cannon was legitimately heated over the blatant disrespect. In fact, Cannon admitted in a 2020 interview with VladTV he wanted to physically harm Eminem at one point.
“I went lookin’ for that muthafucka,” he said. “I went to Detroit. He don’t live in Detroit. He don’t live nowhere near 7th or 8th mile. He lives in Michigan and rightly so. He’s supposed to come up. I believe it was the BET Awards. Like I said, at the time I was managed by Chris Lightly, musically at the time, so was Mariah, Chris was managing 50 [Cent] and he was talking to Paul [Rosenberg] all the time … this is a decade ago.
“Everybody knew how serious I was. I was there to defend my wife. I ain’t give a fuck about no lyrics … you said some disrespectful shit about my wife and I’m going to beat your ass. That was my mentality in 2009 … whatever year that was.”
As the tempers cooled, Slim Shady reignited their old feud when he dissed Cannon and Mariah Carey on the Fat Joe single “Lord Above” 10 years later.
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“I know me and Mariah didn’t end on a high note,” he rapped. “But that other dude’s whipped, that pussy got him neutered/Tryna tell him his chicks a nut ‘fore he got his jewels clipped/Almost got my caboose kicked/Fool, quit, you not gon’ do shit/I let her chop my balls off too before I lost to you, Nick.”
This time, Cannon unloaded on Eminem with not one but three diss tracks aimed directly at Marshall Mathers’ dome. Beginning with 2019’s “The Invitation” featuring an intro from Suge Knight, Cannon laid into Shady with lines such as, “Call Kim, somebody get Hailie/And that other kid you raisin’ that ain’t even your baby (Daddy) and “I heard your chauffeur got a video of you sucking a cock/You paid him off then laid him off/Now who really the opps.”
Nick Cannon followed up with “Pray For Him” and “Canceled: The Invitation” in rather quick succession as Eminem remained mute aside from two tweets debunking Cannon’s “cock sucking” claims. But in a recent interview with HipHopDX, Cannon suggested he went slightly overboard.
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“I was a little overzealous,” Cannon says. “I was a little heavy-handed. I’m going to say a couple of things. First of all, I love Eminem as an artist. Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP — those are some of my favorite albums. But I think there was a lot that went on there. One, the whole goal was to get him to come on Wild ‘N Out and acknowledge it. So there was a mission to it because I was like, ‘Yo, that’d be the most amazing show ever.’ It was an invitation to come on the show. But also, a little bit, what was that, 2018 or something like that or whatever, I was playing the game. In 2008, I was really upset about what he had said about my wife at the time.
“And I was legitimately hot and wanted to fight and all. I was a different guy. So I was mad. And then I think a lot of that started to get stirred up again where the line of, I got so much to say, but I had to know this is entertainment. And there’s a mission here. But at the end of the day, I ain’t going to stand for no disrespect either. So in hindsight, I probably would’ve been a little bit more strategic and let maybe one or two of them linger. But to me, I showed up with a cannon to a knife fight.
He adds, “And he started it [laughs]. I don’t say anything. But I was like, ‘I got time today, Marshall.'”
Nick Cannon Had Dreams Of Being The Next Diddy Or Jermaine Dupri - Then Hollywood Called
Three years later, Cannon has continued to expand his entertainment empire with The Masked Singer,The Nick Cannon Show and, of course, Wild ‘N Out. Coupled with his gig at Power 106 and raising multiple children while battling lupus, Cannon admittedly doesn’t sleep much.
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“Honestly, I’ve never slept a lot,” he says. “I’ve been one of those people who just really had that energy, since running around in the church. And I think I’ve learned to channel of that energy and get centered to where it’s like, alright, now it’s all about time management. So I sleep maybe two to three hours a night. I know my doctor probably think I should sleep more.
“They’re not proud about that at all, but I guess I’ve done this since I was 16 years old. I don’t sleep a lot. And then it’s having a good team around you, too. And just good time management, figuring out when to get everything done. But people always say, ‘Yo, you got more hours in a day than most people.” I do because I don’t sleep. So I literally, my days are, on average, 20 hour days. Being dad, running businesses, being in front of the camera, on the radio — that’s takes up about 20 hours every day. If I get too much sleep, I’m exhausted. And that’s why I do have my crash days, I call it. I crash on Sundays, sometimes even Saturdays, where I was just sleep for 16 hours straight.”
Cannon is currently in the midst of returning his R&B roots. On Friday (February 4), he dropped two new singles from his forthcoming Raw N B: The Explicit Tape mixtape. The project is scheduled for a February 18 release. Check back with HipHopDX soon for Part III of the Nick Cannon interview. Until then, listen to “Weekend Girl” below.
