AT THE BEGINNING of the month, Bon Iver singer Justin Vernon attempted to publicly distance himself from a collaboration he featured on with Eminem.
The song, entitled ‘Fall’ referred to rapper Tyler, The Creator as a ‘f*ggot’. Unhappy about this, Justin Vernon tweeted “Not a fan of this message. It’s tired.” Vernon also said that he asked Eminem to remove that insult from the lyrics, but the rapper and his producers refused to do so.
Now, two weeks later, Eminem’s still receiving questions about that song in interviews.
As part of an interview with 36-year-old rapper Sway, Eminem discussed his decision to keep the homophobic slur on his album. Sway brought up the topic, telling Eminem, “I know that Tyler was a big fan of yours growing up. I recall reading about you saying some good things about Odd Future, saying they were pushing boundaries years ago.”
Eminem replied:
I really did like them, I thought their movement was really cool too. We didn’t make music, but you know I felt like ‘Okay, there’s a mutual respect.’ What ended up happening after that tweet he put out talking about Shady XV saying ‘Why can’t people close to him tell him that it sucks?’ Okay listen, you don’t have to like it and it could really suck, but being that somebody really was cool to you, you’d expect some sort of reciprocation. Don’t go public with your opinion about how much my shit is trash.
Eminem said that he “chalked it up” to the fact that Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt were young.
So I liked him, but then Earl Sweatshirt gets in an interview after Tyler trashes me and Earl says “Anybody who listens to Eminem is drinking too much Mountain Dew”, and I was like, really?
Eminem said this comment hurt his feelings because it came shortly after he had brought Earl, Tyler and the rest of Odd Future on tour with him.
We kicked it and made jokes. I know a lot of this shit, I could come across being very petty, but at a certain point in time – someone has their breaking point.
So, Eminem said that the Mountain Dew insult was what justified using a homophobic slur for him.
Refusing to repeat the word again, Eminem said:
I think the word that I called him on that song was one of the things where I felt like this might be too far. Because, in my quest to hurt him, I realize that I was hurting a lot of other people by saying it… It was one of the things I kept going back to and going “I don’t feel right with this.”
And yet, Eminem went ahead with using the word ‘f*ggot’ on his album – despite the fact that Justin Vernon had also voiced disapproval. The rapper also didn’t make any kind of apology to either Tyler or the people he offended with his language.
