Opinion: We’re All Losers In Eminem And Nick Cannon’s Embarrassing Feud

Originally published on Forbes

Celebrities need to be reminded every day that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

In this case, the celebrities most in need of that refresher are Eminem and Nick Cannon, who have decided to afflict the public with their reignited feud. The beef dates back over a decade and, of course, involves a woman: pop superstar and Christmas queen Mariah Carey.

For years, Eminem has maintained that he and Carey had a relationship, which Carey has repeatedly denied. Eminem dropped her name on his 2002 song “Superman” (“What you trying be? My new wife? / What, you Mariah? Fly through twice”), and on 2009’s “Bagpipes from Baghdad,” the rapper laments the dissolution of their so-called relationship (“Mariah, what ever happened to us? / Why did we break up?”), and calls her then-husband Nick Cannon a “prick” among a slew of other insults. (Carey and Cannon were married from 2008 to 2016.)

Carey took the bait and served up a diss track of her own, the infinitely better and less disgusting “Obsessed,” in which she tells Eminem he “finally found a girl that you couldn’t impress / Last man on the earth, still couldn’t get this.”

Eminem then fired back at Carey with another diss track titled “The Warning,” in which he threatened to disclose evidence of his and Carey’s relationship and described Cannon using a homophobic slur.

As you can see, 2009 was a great year, cooler heads prevailed and everybody had fun. But Eminem wasn’t done! On Friday, an entire decade after this embarrassing three-way feud seemed to have peaked, Fat Joe released “Lord Above” off his new album Family Ties. Eminem guests on the track, once again dredging up his alleged relationship with Carey and taking shots at Cannon: “I know me and Mariah didn’t end on a high note / But that other dude’s whipped, that pussy got him neutered / Tried to tell him this chick’s a nutjob ‘fore he got his jewels clipped / Almost got my caboose kicked / Fool, quit, you not gon’ do shit / I let her chop my balls off too ‘fore I lost to you, Nick.”

Unsurprisingly, this didn’t sit well with Cannon—who, in case you forgot, has not been married to Carey for three years—so The Masked Singer host and All That alum decided to reenter the rap game with not one, but two response diss tracks. The first, titled “The Invitation,” opens with a phone conversation with former Death Row Records CEO and convicted felon Suge Knight and features a smorgasbord of cringeworthy bars: “I heard your chauffeur got a video of you suckin’ a cock / You paid him off, then laid him off, now who really the opp? / Suge called me the new ‘Pac, I ain’t no killer but don’t push me / How the fuck y’all got me battlin’ Elvis P**sly?” Cannon also grossly overestimates the critical potential of his song, rapping, “Took a page out of Drake book, this might get a Grammy.”

Rap beefs are not always dictated by each artist’s commercial success (see Pusha T’s obliterative Drake diss “The Story of Adidon”), but for anyone keeping score at home: Cannon has charted exactly one album on the Billboard 200, with his 2003 eponymous debut peaking at No. 83. (2014’s White People Party Music failed to dent the chart.) He has lodged one song in the Top 40 of the Hot 100, the R. Kelly-assisted “Gigolo” (No. 24). So, Cannon’s reliance on dime-store raps and homophobic insults probably won’t do much to rattle Eminem, the bestselling rapper of all time. Let’s not forget last year’s “Killshot,” in which Eminem told Machine Gun Kelly, “I’m 45 and I’m still outselling you” and “My biggest flops are your greatest hits.”

Cannon dropped a second diss track this morning titled “Pray for Him,” but, really, do you need to hear about it? The man just keeps deluding himself, and Twitter is not impressed: #ripnickcannon is trending in anticipation of Eminem’s response (an ill-conceived hashtag, considering rapper Juice WRLD died two days ago).

Let’s hope that response never comes, though. Eminem is an accomplished MC, but do we really need another diss track laced with misogyny and homophobia aimed at a celebrity whose rap career is virtually nonexistent? Eminem is 47; Cannon is 39; both men have better things to do than trade schoolyard taunts over a woman with whom neither is involved and doesn’t deserve to be dragged down into their gross antics. (She’s too busy making a bid for No. 1 with “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”) There’s no winner in this embarrassing feud between Cannon and Eminem, but we’re all losers for having witnessed it.

Perhaps Eminem should take his own advice from his old Benzino diss track, “Nail in the Coffin”, in which he says: “But I’m only being real when I say, nobody wants to hear their grandfather rap.”