Last year, during the conversation on Joe Budden Podcast, Dr. Umar Jonson said that Eminem can never be the greatest rappers of all time because he’s white. Black hip-hop artists and celebrities, including The Game, MC Shan, Royce Da 5’9″, Mr. Porter, Swifty McVay, Kuniva, Ed Lover, Math Hoffa, Kxng Crooked, Cassidy, Tony Yayo, Orlando Brown, John Salley and Donnell Rawlings came out in defense of Eminem and in a recent interview on The Art of Dialogue, Dr. Umar responded to all of them.
“I was on a podcast interview. The topic came up. I think it was Joe Budden who suggested that Eminem maybe one of the greatest and I said he could never be considered THE GOAT. If you wanna say he’s one of the greatest, make that argument, but you will not call him THE GOAT of a black cultural icon. You are not doing that! Our culture is our culture. We don’t share it. If you want to give people privilege to participate then they have participation privilege but you can not be the face of something my people made. This is not only true for me, this is true for most groups. But because black people suffer from post-traumatic slavery disease and we crave white validation more than oxygen, we are always looking to annoy some non-African as the face of something African people created.” said Dr. Umar.
Then he continued: “So, when I said, Eminem can not be GOAT, I never said he couldn’t rap. I never said he didn’t have talent. I simply said he can’t be the GOAT. No more than DJ Khaled could ever be considered as a DJ or producer cause you are not African. So, a lot of hip-hop artists took offence, they came out of the woodworks with their unlicensed law degrees and served as Eminem’s expert lawyer and publicist to the black world and they defended better than Johnny Cochran defended OJ Simpson and basically told me I have no right to speak on the topic because I’m not a rapper. I don’t have to be a drug dealer to speak about drug dealing.
I don’t have to be a surgeon to speak on the racism that black suffer in the medical industry and I don’t have to be a rapper to speak on rap music but as an African who grew up in hip-hop, as an African who partakes in hip-hop, as an African who is a safe-guard of all African culture, I will speak on anything my people create and anything my people are affected by and I’m just disappointed brother.
Because just like we talked about snow bunny Barkley and snow bunny Shannon and LeBron James earlier defending Caitlin Clark, we saw the same thing happen with this so called gangster rappers who took Eminem’s against your good brother Dr. Umar, and you know what bothered me the most? About all of these rappers defending Eminem without him even asking them to, without him even paying for them to do it, what offended me the most about it, I never seen any of them defend black women the same way. Not one of these rappers who defended Eminem against me, I never seen a single one of them defend black women as ferociously as they defended Eminem. What did I say earlier? Politically effeminate.
Our gangsta rappers are politically effeminate. Our basketball layers, NFL players are politically effeminate. Whenever it comes to holding white people responsible for appropriating black culture, here comes the gangsta rappers to defend their white Jesus. It’s absolutely insane. Black celebrities never defend us. They never defend black America but whenever white folks are offended by black people, they are the first people to pop up.”
“I’ll take it to the culture-vulture DJ VLAD. After that interview I did with Joe budden, Vlad brought all these rappers and celebrities on his platform and he asked everybody ‘do you agree with Dr. Umar who said Eminem could never be the GOAT og hip-hop and and I think 99%, if not 100% of these celebrity black men defended Eminem and reinforced the integrationist colorblind narrative and anybody can be a GOAT of hip-hop…When I said Eminem can’t be the GOAT, hip-hop’s most popular rappers came out and tried to chastise Dr. Umar in defense of Eminem but when Beyoncé came out with the Cowboy Carter album, those country musicians and their fanbase attacked her vehemently. They tried to destroy that sister’s credibility in the country music world even though the roots of country music go to the slave plantations of America.” Dr. Umar added.
