Bagpipes From Baghdad

On this Eastern-flavoured song, Eminem tackles an old relationship with Mariah Carey. (Mariah and Eminem dated for about 6 months back in 2001, though Mariah denies the entire affair). He raps that he wants to rekindle the romance and takes shots at her actor husband, Nick Cannon. Carey's husband took major offense at the insults directed at him and his wife and he took to his blog to comment on it: "A mediocre (at best) Eminem record that sounds like it was written in 2001. At first, I thought it was old material that had been dug up from when dude 'fantasized' about having a pretend fling with Mariah. But all of a sudden I hear my name in the verse! My first reaction was like, 'This is his new sh--? Wow, that's too bad.'"
Cannon continued, angrily claiming that Eminem was racist. He wrote: "She has had enough difficulty in her life dealing with racial and ethnicity issues. Believe it or not, Mariah is the same racial mixture as our beloved president, Barack Obama. (Black Father + White Mother= BLACK). Maybe I'm going too far, but I thought we got past the days where white men could spew vulgar obscenities at our beautiful queens and get away with it. What's next? Are we going to let this trash say something horrible about our lovely first lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama? Or would Marshall have talked sideways out of his neck like this about Oprah Winfrey? This act of racist bigotry cannot go unnoticed. Calling my wife a 'c---' and a 'whore' is way worse than anything Don Imus could have ever said. So trust, repercussions will be served. Anybody got Al Sharpton's number?! LOL Let's not forget about Eminem's amateur mixtape rants of calling African Americans 'ni----' and how he hates 'black bi---es.'"

During an interview with Tim Westwood on BBC Radio 1, Eminem commented that "I kinda spazzed out on that record, but I guess I spazzed out on every record." He added: "There's a line on there that was a little harsh. It's a harsh line. But it's like this, the way I look at it: I had no idea he was gonna take it like he took it. I had no idea Nick Cannon was gonna start wildin' out on me. No pun intended."
Eminem admitted that though he hadn't read Cannon's blog post he'd got the general drift of the message. He said: "I heard about some of the things he was saying. I didn't read his blog or anything. But it is what it is. He's supposed to defend his wife, and I expected him to do that. But at the end of the day, it's a line I said; it's a song. What I actually meant to say is, I wish them the best. That's what I meant to say. That's the whole message of the record."