Canibus performing in 2007
Canibus is somewhat of a unknown rapper. He was big in 1998, but after he became unknown in the hip-hop community. While there were a few things that made him fall off the map -- such as his rhyming scheme being a bit too complicated for mainstream listeners and his songs being different than what you hear on radio -- he still gets praised by the hip-hop community for his lyricism.
In 1997, a song by LL Cool J was in the process of being recorded. One of the lines was a line by Canibus which had said "Hey, LL is that a mic on your arm let me borrow it". Sometime after this, LL heard the line and was offended, which sparked the beef between Canibus and LL Cool J. In 1998, Canibus had dissed LL Cool J again with a song called "Second round K.O." LL Cool J heard it and responded with the track "Ripper strikes back".
Canibus had been working with Wyclef Jean, and after they had heard the response, Wyclef accused Eminem who was up and coming at the time about ghostwriting for LL Cool J's response to Canibus. So they had Eminem come down to a video shoot for "I honor u" by Canibus. Canibus and Wyclef then asked Eminem if he wrote LL Cool J's response, though Em told both Wyclef and Canibus he didn't write it. Eminem then asked if he and Canibus could collaborate, which Canibus accepted.
In 1999, Eminem released The Slim Shady LP. In the song "Role Model" he said: "I'm cancerous / so if so when I diss you wouldn't want to answer this / if you responded back to a battle rap you wrote for Canibus". This confused Canibus as he didn't know if Eminem was dissing him or not. So in July 2000, Canibus dropped his second album, 2000 B.C. (Before Canibus). One of the songs on the album was "Phuk u"; Eminem was supposed to be featured on the track; however, Eminem turned it down.
In an interview in 2002, when asked about the Canibus beef, Eminem said "I turned it down because I didn't get the whole concept of the track". Canibus felt a bit disrespected and it didn't help that Eminem had name dropped Canibus on multiple songs. Canibus would go on to subliminally diss Eminem throughout his next few albums. Em wanted to go all out on Canibus but he was held back by his friends.
In 2001 Canibus had dissed Eminem in the song called "The Ballad" also in the same year Canibus had released his album "C true Hollywood stories" in October 2001 one of the tracks on the album was a sequel to Stan this was because Canibus thought Eminem was dissing him with the song stan. In May 2002, Eminem had released The Eminem Show which featured the song “Square Dance”, in which he dissed Canibus with the line: "Can-i-bitch don't want no beef with Slim". At the end of the song, Em raps the line: "Dr. Dre. wants to square dance with me / Nasty Nas wants to square dance with me / X to the Z wants to square dance with me / Busta Rhymes wants to square dance with me / Can-i-bitch won't square dance with me / Fan-i-bitch won't square dance with me / Canada-bis don't want no parts of me / Dirty Dozen wants to square dance with you".
Later on, in November 2002, Canibus had released "The Mic club"; while there were still subliminal disses, the album only had 13 tracks on it. There were supposed to be more tracks, but they were cut as they were owned by The Mic Club label. One of these songs was was a Eminem diss track called "Damage Control". On the disc art for the album there are several hidden messages one of them being "Battle Me Slim Shady", as Canibus wanted to battle Eminem.
Eventually, Eminem had made a diss track towards Canibus it was called "Can-i-bitch" on the leaked Straight from the Lab extended play in November 2003. The song was a quasi-diss towards Canibus. Canibus hasn't really said much about the diss track, which means he must have caught that it was a joke.
In 2003, Canibus joined the U.S. Army, and by November 2004 Eminem released his fifth album Encore, which disapointed fans and critics but it featured the song "Like Toy Soldiers" in which he talked about his beef with Benzino and Ja Rule. At the same time, during Eminem's beef with Canibus, he got into a beef with Benzino and Ja Rule; however, he doesn't talk about Canibus at all.
During the next few years, Eminem would go on a hiatus, specifically the years 2005 to 2009. In this time, Canibus released some albums that weren't well-received.
In June 2009, Eminem had released Relapse, and like Encore, it had disappointed fans. In "Bagpipes from Bagdad", Eminem dissed both Mariah Carey and Nick Canon, which would lead to a feud with Mariah Carey and Nick Canon. While this was happening, Canibus was recording his album Melatonin Magik, on which was a song called "Air Strike (Pop Killer)", which was a diss towards Eminem. The one thing that was controversial about the diss track was that it featured D12 Eminem's rap group they split up after Proof had died. The primary controversy about the diss track was the line: "If Proof was alive he'd be dyin' inside". Four years prior in 2006, Proof had been shot and killed. Eminem responds to this line in Cinderella man with; “Proof is here in spirit and I’m his spitting image, I mirror when I stand near it. Your pussy lyric I couldn’t hear it”. Another line was about Eminem dissing Mariah Carey. However, Eminem never responded to the diss. There are people saying he responded on the song "Rap God", as he references the battle with Canibus and Dizaster with the line; “It’s actually disastrously bad for the whack”.
In 2019, Eminem was featured on Conway the Machine's hit single "Bang", where he remembered his feud with Canibus and answers with the line “That was back when I smoked Canibus Man / but it was tough / ’cause I was a fan of his / So it sucked to hand him his ass".
3 years later, in 2021, Canibus announced an NFT single which he would be featuring Eminem, and was produced by Dr. Dre