Machine Gun Kelly Blames Eminem for Why People Didn’t Like Hotel Diablo Album

After participating in a lethal rap beef with hip-hop legend Eminem in 2018, Machine Gun Kelly says Em is the reason one of his past projects received a halfhearted welcome from listeners.

During a conversation with Interview Magazine, which was published on Nov. 27, MGK suggested that his beef with Eminem caused his fourth studio album, Hotel Diablo, to have a lukewarm reception from fans after it was released.

"As a hip-hop album, [Hotel Diablo] is flawless front to back, and also a hint at the evolution of how I went into a pop-punk album," MGK told the publication. "But it was coming off the tail-end of that infamous beef [with Eminem]."

As the conversation continued, the "Forget Me Too" rhymer explained how music listeners were distracted by his conflict with Slim Shady.

"It's like if you make a shitty movie and then you come out with a great movie right after, but people want to focus on the fact that they hated whatever you just did," MGK said. "What I did in the beef was exactly what it should be, but that project wasn't welcomed. The next album came from already feeling like I'd counted out, so I didn't even care what the public was going to think."

Hotel Diablo debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart after selling 39,000 equivalent album units in its first week. The LP arrived in July of 2019. That's less than a year after the initial beef between Machine Gun Kelly and Eminem was made public.

Though the feud dates as far back as 2012, the string of diss tracks the two rhymers dropped showed that their issue was deeper than anybody thought. After the Detroit native dropped his track "Not Alike" featuring Royce 5'9," off Em's album, Kamikaze, in August of 2018, Kelly clapped back with "Rap Devil" weeks later.

This led to several diss tracks between the two of them before MGK seemingly called a ceasefire by offering to get on a track with Em.

However, fans speculated that Machine Gun Kelly dissed Eminem again back in March when he offered the new song "Bullets With Names." On the track, MGK claims he killed a "G.O.A.T.," which many thought he was referring to Eminem.

Things shaped up for MGK after the release of his latest album, Tickets to My Downfall, though. The effort, which dropped back in September, is described as "pop-punk" as opposed to being a rap album like its predecessors. According to Billboard, the LP moved 126,000 units in its first week and hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, securing the first No. 1 album of Machine Gun Kelly's career.