The Game has never been shy about taking shots at other artists, but the Compton rapper has admitted that his recent disses of Eminem had an ulterior motive.

In an interview with DJ Vlad, The Game said that he went at Eminem on the song “The Black Slim Shady” because he was mad at Dr. Dre.

“Throwing shots at Eminem and beefing with Eminem, it was just me being upset with Dr. Dre,” The Game admitted. “Dr. Dre can’t out-rap me, so I just went at Em, just because that’s just how I get sometimes.

“But it’s always competitive. It ain’t like I’m gonna see Em and be like, ‘What’s up now?!’ It’s Em, you know what I’m saying? And Em took his shots on a record that dropped, and yo, Em is a funny guy.”

You can see the comments below, beginning at the 1:37 mark.

The Game has spoken about his issues with Dr. Dre before. In a 2022 interview on Drink Champs following the release of his single “Eazy,” he said that Kanye West “did more for me in the last two weeks than [Dr.] Dre did for me my whole career.”

It was a statement he later qualified, though he did not disavow it.

The former Aftermath signee also admitted he was “hurt” by the fact that he wasn’t asked to appear in the 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show, which was headlined by Dre and featured Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige, plus special guests 50 Cent and Anderson .Paak.

“The real reason I wasn’t on the Super Bowl is because I’m not a ‘safe’ artist,” he said on the I Am Athlete podcast several months later. “You don’t know what Game gon’ do when he get up there. They went with the ‘safe’ artists.”

“I feel like this: the Super Bowl is in L.A. It’s a Dr. Dre Super Bowl, but it is JAY-Z [whose company partnered with the NFL on the show],” he continued.

“But JAY-Z understands the dynamics of West Coast Hip Hop very well, and I don’t think JAY-Z would’ve had a problem if Dre would’ve said, ‘We bringing Game on the Super Bowl.’”