The TV personality whose most viral moments are connected to his attempts to attack Eminem goes over the reasons behind it.
Maury Povich, who hosted a tabloid daytime talk show for over 30 years, invited Nick to his podcast. Maury’s show was thriving on relationship drama and exaggerated reveals of paternity tests, so Nick, with his colourful relationship history and 12 children he claims he’s co-parenting, was a very fitting guest.
However, the host was interested not only in Nick’s relationships with women. He asked Nick what was behind his beef with Eminem, and Cannon fell back on the familiar narrative that paints him as a knight in shining armour, insisting that everything that happened was Eminem’s fault:
He disrespected my woman. You can’t come at my wife and don’t expect to get this work. I think he and Mariah had a professional relationship, which he professed to be a personal relationship. That was way before me. So then by the time we got married, he had some harsh words because, I guess, he was still in his feelings. I couldn’t stand for that at the time. I was like, I have the dignity of my woman. I had to fight for my relationship, my love.
The history of the Cannon beef
There is a lot to unpack here. Nick talked a lot about being ready to protect Mariah’s honour, but he keeps changing his story.
When Eminem released “Bagpipes From Baghdad” on Relapse in 2009, Nick Cannon went ballistic. He moved against Eminem with all his might – and wrote a long Tumblr post. From a badly photoshopped picture of Eminem to personal insults and accusations of racism – this post was meant to offend. And that was it. Nick deleted the post the following day, but not before the Wayback Machine scraped the page, so now everybody can compare his later statements to what he actually said when the beef just started.
Later, Nick talked a lot about travelling to Detroit to start a physical fight with Eminem. However, the more details he revealed, the more it looked like his attempt to set up a televised boxing match.
When Mariah released a sneaky diss, “Obsessed”, it felt much more like a pushback than her then-husband’s declarations. Eminem came back at her and Nick with “The Warning”, and eventually the feud faded away.
For years, the subject was buried. Until in 2019, T.I., interviewing Cannon, asked about his old beef with Marshall. A new version of the story went up. In it, Cannon wanted Eminem to be accountable for his lines about Mariah, respectfully. He said:
“I wrote this long-ass letter pretty much saying, ‘Look, I respect you as an artist. I’m actually a fan, and I think you’re one of the best to ever do it. But from man to man, you’re talking out of pocket to my wife. You gotta be held accountable for that, so I need to see you face-to-face”.
That plot twist probably surprised Marshall enough to make him mention Cannon on the collaboration with Fat Joe, “Lord Above”. This time, Nick Cannon did more than a social media postm in response. He started releasing diss tracks. He dropped three of them in 10 days. The response included an SNL sketch, two tweets from Eminem – the equivalent of a raised eyebrow – concerned advice from real rappers to calm down, and an overwhelming number of dislikes on his diss videos. The dislike ratio on these three videos averages 80%.
It did not stop Nick Cannon from declaring his victory over Eminem. And almost immediately, Cannon started talking about how all this beef was not real, and he only used it as self-promotion. In October 2020, Royce 5’9 had a conversation with Nick, after which KXNG Crooked informed the concerned public that “it’s over”.
It indeed looked like it was over. Nick Cannon kept shouting out Eminem and calling himself a fan. And now, here we go again.
This time, Cannon portrays Eminem as delusional and unable to distinguish personal relationship from professional ones, and returns to his own role as a dignified protector of a woman’s honour. Cannon used to say that he only reacts to Eminem bringing their beef up all the time for no reason. And yet again, it is Nick Cannon who is trying to start a new round of the feud. And the reason, as always, seems to be that he needs more attention.