According to Big Gipp, JAY-Z became cooler thanks to Eminem, and Slim Shady was ultimately the superior rapper on “Renegade.”
During a second interview with The Art Of Dialogue, Gipp asserted that Em had the superior verse on the 2001 song, in agreement with Nas, who made a similar claim on his well-known JAY-Z diss track, “Ether.”
Gipp replied, “Hey man, Eminem,” when asked who he thought had the better verse. “And I make love to JAY-Z. One of the best, top 5, is JAY-Z. Top 5 solo rappers, but Eminem was a fucking monster back then. Everybody who was standing near to him was being eaten. You’ll probably respond, “Well, I identify more with what JAY-Z said because that’s my life, that’s where I came from, and that’s my background,'” as would the majority of others.
Okay, that’s correct, he continued, but you also have to look at Eminem and point out the young people who looked up to him. who shares his appearance and heritage. That sends him off into the heart of America and to many locations that we were most likely not there yet.
Therefore, if you’re looking at the demographics, I’m sure that Eminem and JAY-Z visited a lot of locations and households that JAY-Z had never been to just because he appeared on the song with Eminem. So you must consider both viewpoints.
“If you were to cast Em in the same light that Jay did at the time they made that single, he would truly represent it, his neighborhood. But what about power? Wow, Em struck me as being just as good as or perhaps better than Jay in terms of rapping. Actually, according to that record…I believe he brought Jay-Z into homes where he wasn’t already. No way JAY-Z made him cooler; he made JAY-Z cooler.
On JAY-Z’s sixth solo album The Blueprint, “Renegade” was released in 2001. The song, which was written by Hov, Shady, and Luis Restro and produced by Eminem, was initially meant for his group Bad Meets Evil with Royce Da 5’9, Bad Meets Evil. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the song gold in February 2018 after it sold over 500,000 copies.