Asked about recent comments by controversial activist Dr. Umar Johnson, who said calling Em one of the greatest rappers of all time was “white supremacy,” the Philadelphia native disagreed with that view.
Speaking to The Art of Dialogue, Cassidy said: “I do think Eminem is great. He proved it a lot of times. A lot of classic projects, a lot of classic songs, a lot of classic freestyles.
“He’s been making history over and over again and been doing records with all type of races, all type of different backgrounds. It’s hard to say that he ain’t great.”
“I don’t want to make it based on race. It did start as Black culture; Black and Spanish people started Hip Hop,” he added. “But I feel like Eminem been studying it since he was born.
“He knows a lot more about the culture than the average Black person so I feel he deserves to get a pass.”
Dr. Umar’s rant about Eminem came on The Joe Budden Podcast late last year, where he called the reverence of the Detroit rap legend an “insult” to Black culture.
“This is going to my African fundamentalism,” he prefaced his tirade. “No non-African can ever be the best of anything African. It is an insult to the ancestors, it is an insult to the race and it is an insult to every Black person.
“We gotta stop naming non-African people as being the best of any aspect of our cultural power because it is an insult … I can acknowledge Eminem’s talent. But for you to put him at the top, that’s white supremacy.”
In addition to Cassidy, several other Hip Hop figures have taken issue with Dr. Umar’s comments, including legendary radio host Ed Lover who responded during an episode of his C’Mon Son! podcast.
“Eminem don’t need Dr. Umar to tell him he’s one of the greatest of all time because we’ve already have said it,” he argued. “Hip Hop is for everybody. Hip Hop might’ve been created by Black people, but the love of music, melodies and rhymes have spread all over this world.”
He added: “That’s like saying [Big] Pun can’t be one of the greatest of all time because he’s not African American, ’cause he’s Puerto Rican; Fat Joe don’t deserve to be in Hip Hop because he’s not African American. You weren’t there, Dr. Umar, respectively. You were not there.”
When it comes to being a student of the game, Eminem has previously been praised by Big Daddy Kane. Speaking to HipHopDX last year, the Juice Crew legend said Slim Shady caught him off guard with his rap nerd insights when filming his documentary Paragraphs I Manifest.
“The interview with Eminem was very, very intense,” Kane said. “He mentioned some things that I never really paid attention to or thought about, like the way I had to really sit and say, ‘You sure I’m the first person that did that?’ Like, ‘Hold on, let me double check.’ He mentioned something that I never really thought about or paid attention to.”
