Nelly is looking back—and laughing—at his brief and unexpected rap beef with Eminem, admitting he completely misunderstood the situation and made a fool of himself on national TV.
In a recent interview with Bootleg Kev, the Country Grammar hitmaker shared how he once thought Eminem was throwing shots at him, prompting Nelly to clap back on MTV’s TRL with a wild on-air diss.
“I said something dumb like, ‘I eat M&M’s candy,’ and even tried to make St. Louis a no-fly zone for Eminem,” Nelly recalled, shaking his head at the memory.
“I went on TRL like a jackass!”
Eminem responded in classic Slim Shady fashion, casually firing off a lyrical jab in one of his songs, referencing “stomping in my Air Force Ones,” a nod to Nelly’s hit track.
But the tension didn’t last long.
Nelly eventually crossed paths with Em at a concert after-party — and that’s when things flipped. He realized Eminem’s daughter, Hailie Jade, was a huge fan, and suddenly the “beef” seemed totally ridiculous.
“It hit me, like… we were big Eminem fans too. Me and the St. Lunatics loved his music,” Nelly admitted. “I had barked up the wrong tree.”
Nelly now looks back at the incident with humor and humility. The misfire came during a time when Eminem was juggling several high-profile rap feuds — and Nelly quickly stepped out of the line of fire.
He went on to release his second album, Nellyville, which became a massive success and proved he didn’t need beef to climb the charts.
