Some might think that Eminem and Moby can be put in one sentence, given the intense feud that exploded in the early 2000s. However, there are more similarities between the two stars than meets the eye.
Anyway, the feud is in the past, and Moby has found some nice words for Eminem. But still, not for his fanbase.
History Hour
It all came to a boil during the 2001 Grammy ceremony. Eminem had been chased by left and right-wing protestors alike for his lyrics. To demonstrate that Eminem, as a person, is quite different from his stage alter ego and has no problem with gay people, he performed that night with Elton John, a gay icon who later became his friend and mentor. However, it did not please the opposition. It certainly did not pacify Moby, who told LA Times that evening what he thought about Eminem: “He’s very good at what he does, but he’s also a misogynist and homophobe and racist and anti-Semite. I’m 33 and can see through it. But I can’t imagine that an 8-year-old in Idaho sees it as just a joke”.
That was quite a string of accusations. The emotions that evening ran high. In the Album of the Year category, two of the most important records of the decade, Em’s The Marshall Mathers LP and Radiohead’s Kid A, lost to Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature. By the way, Radiohead had nothing against Eminem, as their guitar player Ed O’Brien said: “We all feel he’s made the most culturally significant album of the year, and it’s a terrific record”. And while Eminem harvested three awards that night, he must have felt the sting.
So, he responded the way he did back then – with a bigger sting, with a louder slap. The very next year, he went after Moby on “Without Me” – not only in the lyrics (“And Moby? You can get stomped by Obie / You thirty-six-year-old bald-headed faggot, blow me / You don’t know me, you’re too old, let go / It’s over, nobody listens to techno”) but also in the mocking visuals.
Second Lap
In turn, Moby responded on his personal blog:
“i’m so amused…
apparently eminem disses me on his new single.
i haven’t heard it yet, but i do think it’s very funny that he’s singled me out as an object of his scorn.
the weird thing is that i actually do think that eminem has skills as an mc, but it disturbs me that he glorifies homophobia and misogyny in his songs, especially seeing as his listeners are, for the most part, very impressionable 10 year old boys.
oh well.
i’m honored to have received my first celebrity diss. well, first celebrity musical-diss.
i won’t be dissing him back (given the fact that my skills as an mc are terrible, almost as bad as homer simpsons, ok, worse), but i will say, as i said before, that musicians need to assume a certain aritistic responsibility when their fan base is very, very young.
a 30 year old listening to an eminem song that glorifies misogyny and homophobia is going to interpret the lyrics a lot differently than a 10 year old listening to the same song.
from my perspective any music that glorifies abuse, misogyny, homophobia or racism is disturbing, but especially so when its targeted to fan base of 10 year old boys”.
How did Eminem respond? He took an adult-sized doll dressed like Moby on tour to shoot it on stage. Moby fired back, implying Eminem had a crash on him. At the 2002 Grammys, Eminem told Moby, “You’re dead”, and handed him a picture where Slim was strangling a techno star. Moby found it amusing, framed the picture and hung it on the wall. Later, in 2023, he reflected on this story in an interview with NME: “I’d like to thank Marshall for introducing me to his legion of 13-year-old, future-Trump-supporting fans. None of these people were running out to listen to my music, so it did in a negative way introduce me to a weird demographic of right-wing Americans who otherwise I would probably have had no contact with”.
What Has Changed?
In Moby’s most recent interview with The Times, he is more articulate about how his opinion about Eminem has transformed over the years: “As time has passed, Eminem’s proven himself to be very progressive, very smart. When he speaks out against Trump, against ICE, I’m like, ‘Wow, kudos to you’. Eminem’s followers, they’re middle America and very inclined towards supporting Trump”.
Moby stayed nonchalant about this whole affair from the beginning. The main sore point, as it seems, is Eminem’s fanbase, more even than Eminem himself. The evolution of Moby’s attitude is evident in how he talks about Em’s fans. And let us say, the transformation is not complete. Moby started out angry about hypothetical 8-year-olds who might misunderstand Em’s music. Then he progressed to imagining them as 10, then as a 13-year-old. What a development!
Now, Moby no longer mentions the age. However, he insinuates a strong connection between Marshall’s followers and the MAGA movement. It is a mystery how he balances this point of view with his own observation that Eminem speaks out against Trump. Back in 2017, in the 2017 BET cypher, Marshall went full force against Trump apologists:
And any fan of mine who’s a supporter of his
I’m drawing in the sand a line, you’re either for or against
The amount of hate he faced back then was comparable to the backlash he faced in the 2000s. However, this is not what Moby prefers to remember. And while we can only welcome the fact that Moby understands Eminem better now, it would still require some work from him to stop tarring Em’s followers with the same brush and portraying them as stupid, infantile, and politically delusional. It is a popular trick to cast a shadow on an artist by denigrating his audience. Moby, who now declares he is living a quiet, ascetic, almost monastic life, should probably give thought to why he is inclined to do this.
Opposites Attract, Similarities Clash
At the end of the day, there are many similarities between these two as people and artists. Both came from a disadvantaged background and grew up without a father. Both grew up with a neglectful mother with substance abuse issues. And both later struggled with addiction, coming close to death. Similarly, both turned their life around completely, went sober, and found strength and solace in work.
Moby does not see a day without going to the studio. “I work seven days a week, 365 days a year, because almost nothing brings me more joy than working”, he said in the interview. Difficult not to see the parallel with how diligent Eminem is with his work. The main difference, maybe, is that Marshall had children to go back home to and still has more obligations to his extended family. But both created music that has shaped the music landscape of the century. There is no need for them to focus on differences, real or imaginary, when both of them are on the same side of history.
