Lana Del Rey has never shied away from referencing her influences within her music. Since the beginning of her music career, long before she was even known as Lana Del Rey, the singer has been adorning her lyrics with references to famous writers such as Walt Whitman and Sylvia Plath, as well as pulling direct quotes from songs by the likes of David Bowie, Elvis Presley, The Crystals, and Bruce Springsteen.
Del Rey creates an aural collage of American pop culture and music history within her work by paying homage to artists of times past. In an interview with NME in 2012, Del Rey claimed that she “like[s] all the greats of every genre, just the masters of every genre” such as Bob Dylan, Nirvana, and even Eminem.
Although she has never explicitly referenced the American rapper in her lyrics, her Born to Die hit ‘Blue Jeans’ contains the words “You were sorta punk rock/ I grew up on hip hop.” Del Rey has expressed her love for Eminem in previous interviews, saying, “He really changed my life because I didn’t know music could be intelligent.”
She continued, “He was talking about his own life, and he wasn’t just rhyming over music for rhyme’s sake… That made me think I could talk about the way things were instead of just making stupid music.”
Listening to Del Rey’s music might not immediately bring Eminem to mind, but the influence of hip-hop is strikingly apparent on albums such as Born to Die and Lust for Life, with the latter even featuring rappers A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd. Hip-hop beats form the structure of many of Del Rey’s tracks, such as ‘Born to Die’ and ‘Summer Bummer’, with the musician undoubtedly drawing inspiration from Eminem to create these sounds.
Lyrically, Del Rey’s honest, and sometimes shocking, words such as the infamous lines “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola/ My eyes are wide like cherry-pies/ I got a thing for men who are older” on ‘Cola’, have a sensibility clearly inspired by the controversial rapper.
Yet, in 2014, Del Rey’s hip hop hero made a vile misogynistic comment towards the singer in a freestyle track to promote a Shady Records compilation. Sadly unsurprising due to the rapper’s track record of threatening women within his lyrics, he rapped, “Play nice? Bitch I’ll punch Lana Del Rey right in the face twice, like Ray Rice in broad daylight in the plain sight of the elevator surveillance/ ’Til her head is banging on the railing, then celebrate with the Ravens.”
Del Rey’s then-friend Azealia Banks (their feud is a story for another day) even clapped back, Tweeting, “But does Eminem know that I will personally punch him in his mouth?!” as well as “Tell him to go back to his trailer park and eat his microwave hot pocket dinner,” finishing by asking the rapper to also go back to doing some rather explicit activities with his sister.
The incident hasn’t stopped Del Rey from listening to Eminem, though. In 2020, she posted a video of herself listening to one of the rapper’s most popular hits ‘Lose Yourself’. It seems that her love for Eminem’s music is stronger than the offense he might have caused in his lyrical attack.
