The Game appeared on the Big Big Big Show to talk about his West Coast identity, credit Kanye over Dr. Dre (again) and trying to imply that Fat Joe was afraid to diss Eminem.
At some point in their conversation, The Game came back to his forever sore point of breaking up with G-Unit and discovering that not many people took his side of the beef:
When I was through the beef [with 50 Cent], Eminem and Dr. Dre had to side with Fifty. Eminem because of Fifty and Shady, and G-Unit. And I thought Dr. Dre was going to ride with me because it’s N.W.A, it’s Compton! But it’s a business, and at 24 years old, I did not know that.
It came as no surprise to Fat Joe as he knows from personal experience that Eminem stays true to his friends. But also, mentions Joe, Em is not out there seeking blood for no reason. He told the Game:
You know, Eminem is super loyal. I was mad cool with Eminem, and when I beefed with Fifty, he never said nothing about me, but he never talked to me. And once I squashed the beef with Fifty, Eminem became my boy again. He’s a loyal motherfucker.
And that was the point The Game really latched on:
You were about to go bar for bar with Eminem?
Nothing in Joe’s story implied that there was bad blood between him and Em, but Game, who is spiralling down the dark path of trying to beef with Marshall, is clearly preoccupied with this topic. So when Joe told him that no, he was not going to do that, and first of all, because it’s Eminem, The Game made a swing at Joe’s ego:
Wait, hold on, Fat Joe, can’t go bar for bar with Em?
Joe’s reaction was a masterclass of how a public figure should manoeuvre in dangerous waters and avoid traps laid by their counterparts. In one response, Fat Joe put a reiteration of his status, a praise to the GOAT and a light hint on what exactly made Eminem so well respected: the focus on his music above any industry politics:
Yo, listen, Eminem is dead nice. I would go with anybody! But what I’m saying is he was my man! And then when I caught the beef with Fifty, remember, he was on the “Lean Back” remix and all that. He just faded to the back. He didn’t diss Fifty, he didn’t diss Fat Joe, he just stayed in the cut and once everything got cool, he passed it up and showed love again.
It did not look like The Game paid much attention to the moral of this story, though. Well, everybody has their own lessons to learn.
