On August 30, rapper Eminem dropped the unannounced yet still successful album, Kamikaze. This followed up his unsuccessful album Revivalthat was released back in 2017.

Billboard believes that Kamikaze may earn over 360,000 equivalent album units in its first week – nearly 100,000 greater than the first-week numbers for Revival. Illada producer, who produced four tracks off this album, sees Kamikaze as Eminem’s return to The Slim Shady LP album.

The first song of the new album ‘The Ringer,’ began showing who spoke negatively about Eminem as well as those who are “safe” from his wrath. He wrote, “if you ain’t Kendrick or Cole or Sean, then you’re a goner,” which cleared them from the album’s upcoming roast. Aside from the short “safe list,” there were no limits in calling out who he wanted: From Lil Pump and Tyler the Creator to President Trump.

His song ‘Lucky You,’ featured rapper Joyner Lucas and it’s about how Eminem sees his career and what the today’s generation of society looks at now. He explained how he only wanted recognition. The song is about acknowledgment, but he had to get a few names in. ‘Lucky you,’ went to Drake, who uses “ghostwriters.” A ghostwriter writes lyrics, but receives no recognition; the artist does.

Eminem jabs out, “You got a couple of ghostwriters, to these kids it don’t really matter.”  The line finished off, “They askin me what happened to hip hop, I said I don’t have the answers.” The verse proves that Eminem thinks that the generation of listeners today do not care about if the lyrics are real or not anymore. To him, it is not what it used to be when he started out in the music industry.

Back in 2012, a photo of Eminem’s daughter appeared and rapper Machine Gun Kelly made a tweet about her. Kelly tweeted, “Ok so I just saw a picture of Eminem’s daughter…and I have to say, she is hot as f***, in the most respectful way cuz Em is king.” Following the tweet, Kelly was banned from Eminem’s Shade 45 on Sirius XM, as well as other locations. This had Kelly work with tech n9ne’s song ‘No reason.’

With Kamikaze’srelease, Eminem blew back at Kelly for the track: “But next time you don’t gotta use Tech N9ne if you wanna come at me with a sub-machine gun/ And I’m talking to you but you already know who the — you are, Kelly.”

Kelly decided to retaliate with his track ‘Rap Devil,’ writing, “Mad about somethin’ I said in 2012, took you six years and a surprise album just to come with a diss.” The track wasaimed at the ‘8 Mile’ rapper was released within two days of the Kamikaze release, starting a true rap battle.

On September 4, a producer from Shady Record shared that the Kamikazerapper is creating a new track for Kelly. He stated, “We doing something else right now, but trust me, we’ll get to it. I’ll tell you this, I wouldn’t wanna be [Machine Gun Kelly],” he contested.

Despite the battles from the album, Kamikazehas had one of the biggest opening weeks in 2018. Only time will tell who else is willing to take on Eminem.