MGK bas beaten his previous record for the smallest cypher and recorded a new one alone — over the symbolic beat of “Renegade”, which Marshall produced for Royce 5’9.
The joint with Royce was not finished and released by the time Em did a joint with Jay-Z, yet still he asked for Royce’s permission to use the beat, Royce remembers:
Jay-Z was at a deadline and he had been asking Em to get on something. Em didn’t want to miss Jay’s deadline because obviously, he respects him. I don’t think he had time to go in and do a whole new joint, so he called me and asked if I was cool with just giving Jay that one and we’ll just do something else. I was like, “Yeah, that’s cool”.
For Eminem, Hov’s project was important. Just a year earlier he dropped “The Marshall Mathers LP” and had a hell of a backlash, being accused of destructive tendencies, corrupting the youth, and what not. On “Renegade” he responded to critics, both from Hov’s and his own perspectives.
The song is also famous for sparking endless debates on who out of those rap giants won by presenting a stronger verse. Jay-Z himself implied that for him it might be the case of meeting a stronger opponent:
I think Eminem is a very intelligent rapper… I’m a constant collaborator, you know and… some people gonna have better days. It’s just the way it is. But if we count the amount as the competitor and if we count the amount of records that I’ve been on versus people who had better performances then it’s gonna be 400 to 3.
So, when MGK decided to go to his backyard and shoot another freestyle after his previous one with Cordae, his choice was not in any way random. He wanted to shoot at his perceived haters and competitors, he wanted to flow over Eminem’s beat, and he wanted to present better lyrics than Marshall wrote.
It’s been years, and it still hurts him so much just where he was kicked by “Killshot”.
