Benzino vs. Eminem: More Than Idle Words

Another beef is brewing in the rap world, and this one is a little more than a few idle words and disses. Raymond “Benzino” Scott, co-owner of The Source magazine and one-third of the rap group Made Men, has declared war on Eminem. He has sparked an explosive exchange of words that has the music industry buzzing.
The Source’s February issue had Ja Rule on the cover, but the lower right hand corner featured a caricature of Benzino holding Eminem’s head, with his spine still attached, an image that would give Mortal Kombat fans cause for a double take. The question is: Of all rappers, why is Benzino calling out Eminem?
The beef started from an out-of-nowhere Benzino diss song titled “Pull Your Skirt Up.” In it, Benzino had many unfavorable things to say about Eminem. One line stated, ” . . . this 2003 Vanilla Ice/ how is you playing it?/ If you ask me/ you really ain’t that nice/ you’re overrated.” He also asks the rap world to “go back to the streets,” and realize that Em is playing by a “different set of rules.” Benzino also took jabs at Eminem’s new protegees 50 Cent, Obie Trice and his crew, D-12.
Not wasting time, Eminem went into the studio and crafted two response records, “The Sauce” and “Nail in the Coffin.” “The Sauce” questioned The Source’s credibility in judging rap records. Benzino has been accused of advertising more for some rap records and less for others, making the magazine’s coveted “Record Report” and “Mic Rating” columns questionable.
One of Eminem’s lyrics stated, “No more Source for street cred/them days is dead/Ray’s got AK’s pointed at Dave Mayz head/every issue there’s an eight-page Made Men spread,” a reference to Source co-founder David Mays. Eminem said that when he was trying to start his career, he couldn’t get a record because he was white. Now, he said, the irony is that he is being criticized for becoming successful.
The song “Nail in the Coffin” hit Benzino twice as hard, stating, “I would never claim to be no/Ray Benzino/an 83-year-old fake Pacino,” and “What you know about being bullied all your life/oh, that’s right, you’re half-white.” Yet, the line that made Em shine was, “If you were really selling coke/what did you stop for?/Dummy, if you stew somecrack/you’ll make a lot more money than you do from rap.” Benzino wrote the final installment of the diss-series with a song called “Die Another Day,” that begins with a taped conversation between him and Eminem’s manager, Paul Rosenberg, who seemed to call for a resolution of the conflict. But Benzino clung to his position to “bring hip-hop back to the streets,” calling Eminem “the rap David Duke, the rap Hitler,” and himself “the rap Huey, the rap Malcolm, the rap Martin.”
These remarks, along with the February issue of The Source, show that Benzino is not backing down. In that issue, an article aimed at Eminem, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Emceeing,” claimed that Eminem is “the refinement of white supremacy.”
From the other side, Em spoke to WQHT-FM New York’s Angie Martinez about the Benzino situation, saying, “You can’t play two sides of the fence. You can’t be a rapper and own half of a magazine, because then what happens is you call rappers that you like and you want to make guest appearances on your album, and they don’t want to do it because you suck . . . he gonna take you out his magazine.”
So the battle between Ray Benzino and Eminem has been raised to a higher plateau. Benzino is playing the race card. Em, on the other hand, is trying to trump as “an underground emcee that rose on rap skills, not color.” We’ll have to wait and see how Eminem replies in the February issue of XXL magazine.
This battle is far from over.