In a new Panda CHOP! News interview, legendary battle rap figure Poison Pen responded to Mickey Factz’s recent take that Eminem doesn’t count as a real battle rapper. Factz had suggested that battle rap didn’t truly begin until the Murda Mook vs. Loaded Lux era, and that Eminem shouldn’t be considered part of the culture by today’s standards.
However, Poison Pen disagrees. While he sees where Mickey was coming from, he calls the statement flat-out wrong.
“You Can’t Change the Rules Looking Back”
“What he said was kind of right, but it’s not right”, Pen begins. “Eminem is obviously not a battle rapper by the criteria we utilise today, but you can’t retroactively change the rules of something how it was back then because it’s not how it is today. That does not make sense”.
Pen went further, adding, “To say he was not a battle rapper is utterly ridiculous when he got his notoriety from Scribble Jam, from Rap Olympics, from battling on the corner. He was all sorts of battle rapper, the fuck you mean?”
More Than One Way to Battle
Pen explains that battle rap today is a different structure entirely. But that doesn’t erase the past.
“Is he a battle rapper in the sense of how battles are structured today? No”, he says. “Because the battle format that exists today did not exist at that time. So to say he was not a battle rapper is utterly ridiculous cause Eminem was an active battle rapper that was actively smoking shit”.
“There is more than one way to battle”, Pen adds. “People battle in cyphers, people battle on wax, people battle on stage. He doesn’t battle how people traditionally battle today, but that does not mean he wasn’t a battle rapper cause he 100% was”.
Don’t argue with historians
Poison Pen, real name Lékan Herron, is more than qualified to speak on battle rap history. The Brooklyn native is a central figure in the scene, having run East Coast GrindTime and hosted battles for URLTV and King of the Dot. He was also part of the legendary Stronghold crew.
Last year, Pen shared a memory of Eminem battling NYC rapper Karate Joe in the street, one of many stories that show Em’s roots in the culture.
In the end, saying Eminem wasn’t a battle rapper just doesn’t hold up. People like Poison Pen, who saw it all firsthand, know the truth – Eminem came up battling on street corners and in competitions like Scribble Jam and Rap Olympics. He didn’t simply join the culture, he helped build it. The rules may have changed, but the roots are still the same. Eminem earned his place in battle rap history, and no rewrite can take that away.
