The 00′s were a wild time for pop culture and when I say wild, I mean wild. Around the start of the century, some of the biggest beef in pop culture involved Eminem, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Creators on TikTok have been discussing the feuds in the wake of a wave of noughties nostalgia, with some sharing clips of Eminem and Christina admitting to crushes on one another and Eminem alleging that he once ‘tongue-kissed’ Britney.
What was this beef? Where did it come from? Was it a battle of the bleach blondes? No, it seems to go much deeper than that and according to some old footage, Christina and Eminem may even have had crushes on each other before the feuds started.
The lyrics that got Eminem into hot water
So, Eminem famously did a lot of name-checking artists in his songs including Mariah Carey, Will Smith, Christina Aguilera and our girl Britney Spears.
In his song Marshall Mathers, Eminem rapped: “Instincts to kill NSYNC, don’t get me started. These fuckin’ brats can’t sing and Britney’s garbage.” Charming.
He didn’t leave it there. In later years, when his daughter Haillie revealed to the rapper that she was a fan of Britney’s, he said that the Gimme More singer wasn’t appropriate for her young fans following an appearance at the VMAs where she was, in his words, “dressing trashy”.
The outraged rapper said: “These little girls start looking up to her because she’s like this cute little teeny bopper and then all of sudden… what happened?”
Then there’s Christina.
Over on TikTok, keen-eyed viewers have uncovered footage of Christina Aguilera and Eminem admitting to having crushes on each other with Eminem even joking about taking her home. Needless to say, this didn’t last.
In an MTV documentary in 2000, Christina was chatting with her girlfriends about her favourite music videos and said that Eminem’s hit single My Name Is was one of her favourites.
She went on to say that the rapper had a cute face and dismissed rumours about them dating before adding that the pair had only met once but she thought he was a “cool guy”.
In a bit of a turn in tone, Christina said she had heard he was married to “the girl he talks about killing on his record” which Eminem took issue with – check out the video below:
In his track 97 Bonnie and Clyde, the rapper wrote about killing Kim and having his daughter help dispose of the body with lines such as, “Mama said she wants to show you how far she can float, and don’t worry about that little boo-boo on her throat, it’s just a little scratch, it don’t hurt.”
Hmm.
The song goes on to say: “Dada made a nice bed for Mommy at the bottom of the lake, hey, you wanna help dada tie a rope around this rock? We’ll tie it to her footsie then we’ll roll her off the dock.”
We can definitely see where Christina was coming from.
Eminem’s strange retaliation
Eminem then released another massive hit, The Real Slim Shady in which he suggests that Christina had been sleeping with Carson Daly and Fred Durst saying “they’ll argue over who you gave head to first”, before taking aim at her 2000 MTV documentary saying, “little bitch put me on blast on MTV, yeah, he’s cute but I think he’s married to Kim hee-hee,”.
He then added a very odd line which said, “I should download her audio on MP3, show the world how you gave Eminem VD”.
... Lovely.
After all of this, Christina had to present Eminem with an award at the 2002 VMAs. Before announcing his name she simply uttered, “interesting”.
Chaotic.
“They could have been a power couple”
As well as agreeing that Christina didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, some TikTok commenters believe that we lost out on a power couple with user Stef Castro saying, “there is a universe where they ended up together” and another named Lil’Mama adding: “Oh please they’d have been a power couple”.
Eminem was still rapping about her as recently as 2018, but Christina is confused as to why he still mentions her at-all. During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live Christina said: “That’s really in the past and, you know, it was thirsty then, it’s thirsty now.”
We agree.