Sounding like a petulant manchild with a persecution complex, Eminem starts the track by saying he’s the victim: “Only reason I dissed you in the first place / Is because you denied seeing me”. When Eminem inevitably retaliated against Mariah with The Warning, it was dismissed as just another latest in a string of women Eminem had attacked, including Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse. Obsessed’s target was never one person - it was a universal anthem for women. In Obsessed, Mariah calls the subject of the song out for ‘ Lyin’ that you’re sexing me’ and wonders why he’s “ Tellin’ the world how much you miss me / But we never were, so why you trippin’?” It’s no coincidence the song specifically asks women to join in with lyrics like “ All the ladies sing”, or that Mariah never confirmed that the song and video were even about Eminem. Instead, the fact that Mariah decided to speak out against the misogynistic gaslighting that’s so pervasive in our society was ignored. Headlines like “Mariah Carey fires back at Eminem” were everywhere, with some critics arguing that Obsessed was just a publicity stunt designed to “help Mariah stay in the headlines for weeks to come - long enough to fuel hype for her album”. Nevertheless, the he-said, she-said media circus, fuelled by an online stan war in the comment section of each artist’s YouTube videos (which still rages on today), dominated public discourse when it came to Obsessed. It’s something that Mariah has always vehemently denied, while Eminem continues to bang on about. Non-stans might not know that since 2001, rumours have swirled that these two (briefly) dated. That’s because after the song was released, fans and music critics alike went into a frenzy of speculation that this was the diva’s clapback to Eminem’s song Bagpipes for Baghdad, in which he makes a plea to rekindle a romance, while also calling Carey a “fucking whore”. But talk to people on the street and they probably only know it as “that one about Eminem”. It’s a song that offers listeners a blistering account of what it’s like having a guy stalk and harass you for years. It’s been almost ten years since Mariah Carey dropped her infamous single Obsessed. This article originally appeared on i-D UK.
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