Melle Mel said that Eminem’s fifth place on Billboard and Vibe’s list of the 50 greatest rappers was due to the color of his skin.
Millions of people think of Eminem as the “Rap God” because he has been in the game for so long. His talents were recognized when he came in fifth place on the list that came out last month.
He came in higher than a lot of well-known artists and was only beaten by Tupac in fourth place, Nas in third, Kendrick Lamar in second, and Jay-Z in first. But rapper Melle Mel said Eminem didn’t get the spot because of how good he is at music.
During an appearance on The Art of Dialogue podcast, the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five star was asked what he thought of Eminem’s fifth-place ranking. He started by saying that he’s a “capable rapper.”
He continued:
If you were talking about sales, he’s sold more than everybody. If you were talking about rhyme style, okay he got a rhyme style. But he’s white. He’s white.
Melle Mel then asked if Eminem would have made it into the top five if he were Black. He said that a Black musician who could “rhyme just as well as him” was number 35.
[A rapper] that had records and all that? He’s 35. [Eminem’s] white.
It’s not clear if Melle Mel just picked a number at random to compare Eminem to other artists, but rapper Future came in at number 35 with eight Number 1 albums and ten top 10 Hot 100 hits.
Melle Mel continued:
And anybody could be mad… They could feel how they wanna feel.
If you don’t think that race plays a part in the equation of how great he is — I heard one of the dudes that’s down with him, Royce Da 6’9″ [Royce Da 5’9″] or one of those – I heard he’s just as good as Eminem.
Why he ain’t as big as Eminem? Because he’s Black. Ain’t none of that sh*t hard to figure out. Eminem gets a top spot because he’s white.
Melle Mel was number 48 on the list. Billboard praised him for his “game-changing run with Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five” and his 1984 appearance on the Grammy-winning track “I Feel for You,” which they called a “key early crossover moment between the hip-hop and R&B worlds.”
