Anyone who accessed social media over the past couple of week has surely heard of the feud between legendary rap artist Eminem, and legendary idiot, Richard Colson Baker, AKA Squirt Gun Colson, AKA Machine Gun Kelly. The feud gained traction recently when Eminem dropped his album Kamikaze (check sharkscene.com for my review of the album as a whole.), and specifically called out MGK on one of the tracks, titled Not Alike. This provoked MGK to drop a diss-track on Eminem titled Rap Devil.

In terms of the track that inspired Killshot, MGK really proved his quality of work, that being poor. All of his attempted disses came off as incredibly lazy and immature. MGK makes several references to the fact that Eminem is older than he used to be. Very inspired lyrics if you ask no one. Much like the opening line to the whole track, “Ayy, somebody grab him some clippers. His beard is weird.” I am deeply disappointed in the state of the rap industry if the best line an artist can come up with to start off his diss track is a line calling someone’s “beard weird.”

Not to mention he also compliments Eminem. It’s like he forgot he was writing a diss-track. With lines like, “Homie we get it. We know that you’re the greatest rapper alive,” it’s hard to take anything he says seriously. Along with “insults” like, “all you do is read the dictionary and stay inside.” This is precisely the reason why Eminem is better because he has a firmer grasp on the English language.

Moving beyond the lyrics themselves, the construction of the song is incredibly lazy. There is a chorus that gets repeated four times in the four minute and 47 second song. Nearly a fourth of this whole song is the same set of lyrics repeated.

Anyway, I could spend the next decade tearing apart Rap Devil, but the more interesting topic of discussion is Eminem’s response to the track, Killshot. Released Sept. 14, 11 days after Rap Devil, this track opens with Eminem mocking the main points of Rap Devil–Namely the opinion that Eminem’s beard is weird.

All of the issues I’ve detailed when discussing Rap Devil are not apparent on Killshot. This makes sense, given someone who has the mental fortitude of a toddler made it. To illustrate my point, there is no chorus present on Killshot. Instead, it’s four minutes and 13 seconds of Eminem masterfully delivering devastating disses.

Eminem also directly responds to several of the lines from Rap Devil. He responds to MGK’s constant reference to the fact that he is older and delivers an actual good diss, “With your corny lines (“Slim, you’re old”)—ow, Kelly, ooh But I’m 45 and I’m still outselling you.” Another example is, “I’ll give you a B for the effort, but if I was three-foot-eleven you’d look up to me.” This line is a reference to lines from Rap Devil where MGK calls Eminem short(another example of his immature lines, but I digress).

The disses Eminem drop against MGK carry real weight. For example, this line from Killshot, “It’s your moment this is it, as big as you’re gonna get, so enjoy it had to give you a career to destroy it,” is Eminem telling MGK that he was irrelevant before Eminem decided to engage in this conflict. He implies that he is doing MGK a favor by giving him a boost in popularity, only to do his best to bring it back down. Another line supports this thought, “But you’re a mole hill now I’ma make a mountain out of you, woo!” Eminem is very conscious of how his involvement in this by pure principle will bring MGK more fame than he ever earned on his own. But that won’t stop Em from voicing his opinions as rarely anything ever does.

Those familiar with Eminem’s excellence will be unsurprised by the level of mastery in his delivery. It is difficult to put into words a description of the excellence of the flow on this track, so I would encourage those who haven’t already, to listen to it. It will become self-evident after one listen.

Eminem is the one rapper in the industry all the other artists should be afraid to go after. This feud proves this. SLHS senior Austyn Rhines would concur. “MGK got dissed so bad that at one of his own concerts, he got booed off stage trying to perform his own dis against Eminem. So, I’m pretty sure his career is done.” He adds. Eminem is the most influential rap artist of this generation. Even MGK would agree, as stated previously from Rap Devil, “Homie we get it, we know that you’re the greatest rapper alive.” Eminem’s career is illustrious and his achievements are expansive. MGK’s biggest accomplishment now is giving Eminem the inspiration to release Killshot. It was a valiant effort, Kelly, but this wasn’t Eminem’s first rodeo. His career was built on conflicts like this. Eminem said it best when he said, “(MGK) Say you got me in a scope, but you grazed me.”