Seasoned battle rapper Murda Mook recognised and respected Eminem for his rapping skills. When their paths finally crossed, Mook got weak in the knees but managed to keep his cool.
On The Real Report podcast, Mook talked with Tony Yayo and Uncle Murda and looked back on his victory on Eminem’s battle rap show, Total Slaughter, and his meeting with Marshall. First, Mook made his opinion on Eminem’s place in hip hop very clear:
Em is my favourite rapper ever! Ever, ever! Nobody can change my opinion. I don’t think nobody put any words together better than him on this planet or universe that I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t care if it’s just me, and I feel like that forever. So when I heard Em was a fan of mine, I was like, “The fuck?!”
Mook met Eminem for the first time while visiting Detroit at the legendary St. Andrews Hall. The meeting was short, but it gave him huge validation.
I was in Detroit, and a battle was happening. Everybody was down there, but Em and Paul, they were upstairs. I’m like, “Yo, I gotta meet Eminem”. It was the lifelong dream. I can’t express how I feel about Eminem. I knew Eminem was nice since “My Name Is”. Niggas used to be trying to shit on it, like, “What is this?” I knew how nice he was since then. I could tell you the words. I knew how nice he was since “Yesterday I changed the diaper, wiped you, and powdered you. How did you get so big?” Even before that! I knew about this nigga.
Somehow Paul comes down and says, “Come upstairs”. I walk upstairs, and I’m gonna sound like a bitch, but I got the spaghetti legs. I gave him a pound, and we chopped it for a minute, but I didn’t want it to be awkward. He wasn’t dismissing me. But I did. I wanted to watch the battle. I dismissed myself. He was watching the battle, and we were talking while the battle was going on. After a while, when there wasn’t much more to talk about, I didn’t want just to sit up there and act like I was watching it with him. So I said, “Yeah, all right, I’m going to go back downstairs”. But I was cool. I was cool with that moment.
After that, Mook was invited to battle against Loaded Lux on Total Slaughter. He’s still angry that Joe Budden dismissed him on the way to filming the episode. Still, the victory tasted even sweeter because of it. Eminem believed in him and wanted him on the programme meant to put battle rap on the map, and that mattered more.