Will Smith Didn't Have A Great First Impression Of Eminem
If there's one thing Eminem is good at besides rapping, it's starting beef. The "Lose Yourself" rapper has lost himself in a bunch of feuds over the years: Machine Gun Kelly, Snoop Dogg, and Christina Aguilera are just to name a few. So it stands to reason that the bleached blond Slim Shady might not make the best first impression. That's apparently exactly what happened when he first met "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" star and Oscar winner, Will Smith.
Of course, these days, Smith is persona non grata around Hollywood after his on-stage altercation with Chris Rock at the Oscars in March left the entire viewing audience shocked and befuddled. Smith was forced to issue an apology, withdrew from the Academy, and was banned from attending the ceremony for a decade. His social media, for the most part, has been rather quiet in comparison to the "before-times," and many celebs have voiced their displeasure with him, per The Hollywood Reporter.
But there was a time when he was at the height of his music, TV, and film career, and his choice words upon meeting the up-and-coming Marshall Mathers had a lasting impact on their relationship.
Eminem took Will Smith's VMA acceptance speech as a personal dig
In a 2013 interview with Canadian outlet Montreality, DJ Jazzy Jeff, longtime pal and Will Smith collaborator, spilled the beans on the origins of the Smith-Eminem feud. Explaining that before Marshall Mathers blew up the rap industry with his in-your-face persona and fire lyrics, Jazzy Jeff invited the "Stan" rapper to collab a bit when Smith joined them briefly. "I think I played Will 'Just The Two Of Us.' Will listened to it, and Will looked at him and said, 'You're either gonna be the biggest flop in hip hop, or you are gonna be the biggest thing that we have ever seen in hip hop.' And [Eminem] never forgot that."
He definitely never did. In fact, he made sure to completely diss the "Men In Black" star after Smith won an MTV Video Music Award in 1999 for his hit single "Miami." Upon accepting the award, Smith said, "I never killed nobody in none of my records. I never used no profanity and none of my records, and still, I managed to get up here," per LadBible. That set off Eminem, who hurled insults at Smith in "The Real Slim Shady." "Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records/Well I do/So f*** him and f*** you too." Well, that escalated quickly.
Eminem apparently wasn't all that mad at Will Smith to begin with
In his Montreality interview, DJ Jazzy Jeff explained that in his conversations with Eminem, he found that the rapper wasn't actually all that peeved with "Wild Wild West" star Will Smith, and it wasn't even really about Smith. "He kinda came to me and was like, 'Yo man, you know when I said that stuff about Will, he wasn't mad? ' and I was like, 'Man, Will don't care about that.'" Jazzy Jeff added that Marshall Mathers explained his lyrics were actually about sticking up for pal and collaborator, Dr. Dre.
How does Dr. Dre figure into this? Eminem later went on to explain (via "You Forgot About Dre!: The Unauthorized Biography of Dr. Dre and Eminem" by Kelly Kenyatta) why Smith's acceptance speech seemed like a dig at the kind of music Dre popularized, and other artists on his Death Row record label. "He's dissed the whole genre of rap. He dissed gangsta rap music," Mathers said of Smith. "And that is one of the most influential musics out there ... So if he wants to rap about birds and bees and flowers, then let him rap about birds and bees and flowers, but don't dis nobody else."
As for Smith, Jazzy Jeff told Montreality, "That kinda stuff, he just kinda brushes off." We kinda wish he had done the same during the Oscars.