The 2010 Em album featured the hit Rihanna collab “Love the Way You Lie.”
Images via Getty/Arturo Holmes/Coachella & Getty/Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing
Tyler, the Creator is lamenting the “limited” perspective he had when he was younger and publicly criticizing Eminem’s 2010 album Recovery.
As previously reported, Tyler recently sat down with Mav Carter for a Mavericks conversation that’s very much worth watching in full instead of simply digesting in aggregated excepts like this one. Toward the end of the interview, Tyler emphasized the deep love and respect with which he treats rap at large, noting that it not only changed his life but also the lives of “everyone” around him. Eventually, Em’s name was mentioned, notably in connection with a Netflix series focused on the machinery behind the American opioid crisis.
“Eminem put out this album called Recovery, 2010,” Tyler, who was recently seen in a some decidedly hype-inducing Supreme campaign images, said. “I was a big Eminem fan and when that album came out I fucking hated it. Hated it. Publicly was like, ‘this shit is wack.’ Didn’t like it. And after watching that show, dude, I felt so bad. I felt so bad about those tweets and things like that because thinking from his perspective, someone like me publicly saying that stuff and him getting off drugs and being clean and getting to a point in his life that that’s behind him. … He probably felt like I was attacking him.”
As longtime fans know, Tyler’s admiration for Em’s catalog is well-documented. At various points along their respective artistic journeys, Tyler and Em have crossed paths, including back in 2011 with a chance backstage meeting and three years later when he and Odd Future were tapped to support Em on a pair of stadium shows. More recently, Em dissed Tyler on the Kamikaze track “Fall,” though he later expressed regret for how he went about doing so.
In the new interview, Tyler explained to Mav that he thought he was simply stating that he didn’t “like the music” at the time of Recovery’s release, though he now views the entire scenario much differently.
“He was in a different part of his life and probably felt like I was attacking him,’ he said. “Now I feel so bad about saying stuff because my perspective was so limited. And I love him. That dude taught me how to rap. I learned how to put words together in rhythm because of some of the Eminem stuff I was hearing and storytelling and things like that. So after watching that show, that gave me perspective and I felt terrible. This was a few months ago I and I felt so terrible about some of the things I said about that Recovery album because I realized that was a big step.”
Per Tyler, he now sees that Recovery “meant a lot to” Em, though his “fucking young stupid ass” wasn’t able to see that in 2010.
“I felt terrible, and if I ever see him, I wanna tell him that in person,” he added.
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