Royce da 5'9" Explains Why He Called Out Yelawolf on “Overcomer"

Royce da 5’9” and Yelawolf have been at it lately, taking shots back and forth on Instagram. In January, Royce put his former label mate on notice again with the song “Overcomer.”

Royce discussed the feud in a new interview with Real 92.3. While he didn’t reveal what led to the beef in this conversation, he spoke on the underlying issue.

“It falls into the category of respect,” he explained around the 12:45 mark. “He did something I felt was disrespectful. There was a window of time where he could have called me to clarify or just say something to me. He didn't even think he needed to call me—he didn't even extend me that respect. It was something that happened behind closed doors and he knew I knew about it. I took offense to it, and how I handled it was addressing it on a song. I felt it was the only way I could handle it—for me to air it out publically would imply I'm using it as a vehicle to push an album or be vindictive. I'm not a vindictive person...I felt the only way to do it was let him know it's on my radar. I'm aware.”

In December, Royce was a bit more explicit about why he and Yela weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. “It's a situation going on, especially in hip-hop,” Royce said on The Joe Budden Podcast. “We have all kinds of different people, but we have a type of person in particular. We have white people, white people who come into the business and they use the culture.”

He added, “We got some white people that come in and use that, and then go and do very evil things behind closed doors—very evil, racist things behind closed doors.”

Royce dropped the Westside Gunn-supported single “Overcomer” in January. After the track dropped, Royce took to Instagram to call out Yelawolf for a since-deleted post where Yela blasted the Detroit rapper. “I can remove you quicker than you Deleted this post, David Duke and nobody can stop me,” Royce wrote, responding to Yela, who said, “Yo @eminem get your hype man before the wolves do ... I ain't worried.”

Royce’s new album The Allegory is slated for release on Friday. In addition to the new project, he recently guested on three songs and produced two tracks for Eminem’s album Music to Be Murdered By.