B-Real of Cypress Hill has revealed that he once played a part in stopping an unreleased Eminem diss record from coming out. The record in question was penned by House of Pain’s Everlast.
Speaking to NME, B-Real explained that sometime during the early 2000s he was asked to step in and squash a feud between Everlast and Eminem before things escalated further.
“I just think it was some sort of miscommunication,” he said. “I knew that they both admired each other in spite of the beef. Em would say that Everlast was someone who opened the door for guys like him, so I knew there was a respect there. And I knew Everlast to be a student of Hip Hop and someone who appreciates real MC work so he liked Eminem too in that regard.”
The feud is said to have started when Eminem failed to acknowledge Everlast when the two passed each other in a hotel lobby. Eminem explained that he was rushing to perform a show and didn’t need to “bow down” to the former House of Pain frontman. It was at this point that the lyrical back and forth between the two began.
Starting off with Everlast taking a shot at Eminem and his daughter Hailie Jade in his guest verse on Dilated Peoples’ ‘Ear Drums Pop (Remix)’, Em would then respond with his diss track ‘I Remember’, a track that eulogises Everlast’s career and life while poking fun at his Whitey Ford persona and acoustic blues guitar style.
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Everlast went on to respond with ‘Whitey’s Revenge’ and then Eminem fired off probably one of his most scathing disses to date in the form of ‘Quitter’, a track that halfway through hears the beat switch to the same one 2Pac used on ‘Hit ‘Em Up’.
And that was the end of the feud… or so we thought.
“Everlast gave me a call,” continued B-Real. “He said, ‘Hey man, before anybody gets hurt, especially the fans, why don’t you call Em and tell him we should talk about this.’ And I don’t think it was a point of weakness, he was just thinking of the fans, because it’s the fans that usually get hurt in the crossfire of two artists fighting, you know what I’m saying?
“So I hit up Em and was like, ‘Hey man, E wants to squash this thing. There’s no need for it to go any further.’ And he was like, ‘I just want you to know I didn’t start this and I didn’t want this but this is what happened and this is what made me react’. I got it, he got, it was just miscommunication.
“Fortunately the beef went away and they went back to their normal lives, but it was a bit intense for a second because there was some serious lyrical warfare jumping off, you know?”
Going on to reveal that Everlast had another song in the chamber, one that never made its way out into the public domain, B-Real added: “Remember Everlast is no slouch, he can get with the best of them. He didn’t release his last song. He had another song aimed at Em. It wasn’t a rap though, it was him singing and it was pretty fucking good. But it never got out because he asked me to speak with Em on behalf of the innocent fans and road crews that could have got hurt over this particular bullshit.
“So it never came out, he holstered it and it didn’t escalate past that.”
Asked whether he remembered the name of the record, B-Real responded: “I don’t remember. He didn’t have a title for it when he sung me a couple bars with his guitar but it was hilarious. It would have been a good look for him to put the song out.
“People would have been like, ‘Oh shit!’ But he thought about how people could get hurt behind this shit because, you know, Eminem’s got very intense and loyal fans, they’re dedicated. And Everlast does too but at the time Em was like Elvis so to go up against that army right there is an uphill battle but I think if that song had come out it would have shocked some people to hear Everlast going in like he did.
He added: “I’m just glad Em was willing to listen and that he wasn’t too vexed about the situation where he could have been, ‘Fuck that! It’s gonna end when I want it to end’. Because what do you do after that? You have to let it play out.”
Ending the feud officially in 2014, both Eminem and Everlast appeared on a Busta Rhymes track together titled ‘Calm Down’.
Cypress Hill’s new album ‘Elephants on Acid’ is out now via BMG.
Last week, it was reported that Marhsall Mathers had signed on to contribute to the soundtrack for WWE’s upcoming WWE 2K20 video game and make an appearance in their weekly series Smackdown – following in the footsteps of his rival Machine Gun Kelly, who performed and was ‘attacked’ on WWE RAW in 2015.