The Invitation

Album: Single release only (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • Nick Cannon dropped this track in response to Eminem's dissing him on Fat Joe's "Lord Above." The pair has had an ongoing beef since Cannon married Mariah Carey in 2008. Em claims he briefly dated Carey in 2001, and when she wed Cannon seven years later, he laid into the couple on his tracks "Bagpipes From Baghdad" and "The Warning."

    Their conflict was re-ignited when Cannon stated in an interview on T.I.'s podcast ExpediTIously that he had wanted to physically fight Eminem in defense of his wife. The Detroit native responded on his "Lord Above" verse by calling the media personality "whipped" and "neutered," among other insults.
  • The song kicks off with an actual invitation – voiced from in jail by imprisoned music executive Suge Knight - to appear on Cannon's MTV show, Wild'N Out.

    This is your invitation
    Hitmaka, th-there he go
    To prove to everybody else what you're about


    The single's artwork has large print with the song's title, written over a picture of the Wild'N Out set.
  • Cannon goes deep and nasty in his verse, stating among other things that one of Eminem's daughters isn't biologically his. He also purports that Marshall Mathers paid off a limo driver not to disclose a tape of him getting intimate with another man. Em responded to the allegation by tweeting: "I demand an apology Nicholas, you've made my gardener so jealous!"
  • Hitman Holla, Charlie Clips and Prince Eazy all contribute verses in which they address Cannon's beef with Eminem. All three have plenty of form as battle rappers.
  • Suge Knight closes out the track with some more rhymes calling out Em. The pair has history as Shady was at one time signed to Aftermath Entertainment, the rival label of Suge Knight's Death Row Records.

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