Melle Mel Declares He'd Easily Beat Eminem In A Battle

Legendary emcee Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five knows a thing or two about the art of rap. Today, DJ Vlad released the fourteenth chapter of his extensive interview with Grandmaster Melle, during which he reflected on whether or not he could defeat Eminem in a rap battle -- a topic with which he is certainly familiar. 

"Easily," he declares, his confidence unwavering. "It would be the easiest thing I ever did. At the end of the day, mechanically, technically, he's a great rapper. But I'm the greatest. I know how to write it. I put it down, it's going to stay down. It would be the easiest thing I ever did. When people bring it up, just say you can't beat Eminem. Just say that. But I've been doing this all my life. It would be easy, and I don't even write like I used to."

"This is my destiny," he continues. "Everyone out there rapping, ya'll trying to do something I already did forty years ago. Easiest thing I ever did. Everyone would say oh that's impossible! No, you can't!" Clearly, he feels strongly about his prowess in the battle rap arena, essentially positioning himself as the pinnacle of lyrical prowess. In fact, he goes so far as to state that there aren't even fifty great emcees in the game, period.

"If you think there's fifty great emcees, you aren't one of them," he states. "There's not even fifty great n***as, how its going to be fifty great emcees? Great, that changed territory. It's not there. It's just fifty guys that can rap, and made records. That's not of all time, that's when records came out. My mechanics and my dynamics, my knowledge of what rap is all about, it supersedes anything that goes on out there. People like, how this old muthafucka going to beat so-and-so? Easy -- cause I'm an old muthafucka, I've been doing it longer. I can do it better than you."

He maintains that when Rakim entered the game, rappers were forced to adapt and re-evaluate their own stylistic approach. "I never had to rap different for nobody else," he states. "When I heard Eminem I could rap the same. The game didn't change. It didn't stop nothing. They toss around greatness too much. In order to be great, you had to change something. You could call Eminem a great rapper -- if he was so great, then why isn't there fifty white rappers?" 

While it's likely that Mel's comments will draw the ire of Em's dedicated Stans, it's likely that Slim himself would respect the Furious Five emcee's dominance, given the deep reverence he holds for his rap predecessors -- though some of Grandmaster Mel's latter points might certainly spark a bit of debate. Check out Mel's take on greatness, as well as his reflections on a hypothetical Eminem battle, below.