Eminem is still atoning for his mistakes. The famous Detroit rapper dropped another surprise album on Thursday night, his third such release in the last couple of years. Following 2018’s Kamikaze and January’s Music To Be Murdered By, Eminem made it a trilogy with Music To Be Murdered By—Side B this week.
On one particular track, Eminem makes a direct apology to Rihanna, whom he has collaborated with multiple times in the past—most notably on the hit 2010 single “Love the Way You Lie” and their 2014 Monster tour. So it was a bummer last year when an Eminem track leaked that included the lyric “of course I side with Chris Brown, I’d beat a bitch down too”—referring to Brown’s vicious 2009 felony assault of Rihanna when they had been dating.
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At the time, Eminem’s publicist clarified that the song was 10 years old, and had been recorded during sessions for the rapper’s 2009 album Marshall Mathers, and had been kept off the final version for a reason. “After Eminem recorded it, he scrapped it and rewrote it,” publicist Dennis Dennehy said in a statement at the time.
But just to make it super clear that he totally disowns that earlier lyric, Eminem mentions it on his new track “Zeus.”
“But, me, long as I re-promise to be honest / And wholeheartedly, apologies, Rihanna,” he raps. “For that song that leaked, I’m sorry, Ri / It wasn’t meant to cause you grief. Regardless, it was wrong of me.”
Music To Be Murdered By—Side B is now available on streaming platforms and other music services.
