At the tail end of 2020, Eminem released ‘Zeus’, a track that saw the Detroit rapper reckon with an off-colour lyric he penned about the assault of Rihanna at the hand of Chris Brown.
Taken off his surprise album, Music To Be Murdered By – Side B, ‘Zeus’ saw the rapper apologise for lyrics taken from his track ‘Things Get Worse’, recorded during the sessions for his 2009 album Marshall Mathers.
“Of course I side with Chris Brown, I’d beat a bitch down too,” he raps in the track, which was leaked back in November 2019. ‘Things Get Worse’ also features lyric references to “mercilessly” beating a sex worker and leaving her for “dead”, putting ‘Unwritten’ singer Natasha Bedingfield and murdering actress Dakota Fanning.
After the track leaked, Eminem’s publicist Dennis Dennehy issued the following statement: “This is a leak of something that’s over 10 years old. After Eminem recorded it, he scrapped it, and rewrote it. Obviously he and Rihanna have a great relationship.”
‘Zeus’ saw Eminem offer an apology to Rihanna for the leaked lyric. “But, me, long as I re-promise to be honest / And wholeheartedly, apologies, Rihanna / For that song that leaked, I’m sorry, Ri / It wasn’t meant to cause you grief / Regardless, it was wrong of me.”
Check out ‘Zeus’ by Eminem:
During a recent segment on his SiriusXM channel Shade 45 over the weekend, Eminem delved into the controversial leaked lyric whilst in conversation with Gray Rizzy, admitting that he doesn’t remember recording it.
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“When it first happened, I was like, first, I didn’t know how somebody got it. Second of all, I have no, zero recollection of even remembering doing that, that verse,” he claims.
“I was like, ‘What the f*ck, I said that?’ And that was during early stages of the Relapse record that I was working on. So, you know, it’s ten-plus years old, but not making excuses for it. I said it and I was wrong for saying that, it was fucking stupid.”
Eminem went on to delve into how the creative process of Relapse was challenging, revealing that he had to learn how to rap again following his relapse into prescription drug abuse.
“A lot of times, especially with the Relapse record, when I first started learning how to rap again, because of the drug situation that I went through and having to relearn a lot of things, that was one of those things that it was like, well, if it rhymes, say it,” he admits.
“I think that being able to look back — I mean, that’s not even an excuse — but I’m just saying there was a phase I was going through with that Relapse record. I don’t know. It was one of those things, I think I just said it ’cause it rhymed. And I think I’m sure looking back now, I should have thought better of it.”
Listen to Eminem discussing ‘Zeus’ on Shade 45
