Eminem 'sides with' Chris Brown over Rihanna assault in leaked track

Eminem "sided with" Chris Brown over his assault of Rihanna in 2009, according to an leaked track recorded soon after the incident.

A snippet of the track has been uploaded to Reddit this week and is titled "(Snippet) Eminem - Things Get Worse (Rihanna Diss)".

The track is said to have been recorded for Eminem's 2009 album Relapse.

In the snippet he can be heard rapping: "Of course I side with Chris Brown, I'd beat a b***h down too."

Video contains explicit language

The track went on to become B.o.B's Things Get Worse in 2011 with that line removed from the final version. That version did however include lines about "murdering" Dakota Fanning and "putting Natasha Bedingfield in a washer".

Chris Brown brutally attacked his then partner Rihanna while the couple were on their way to the Grammys in 2009. He was later found guilty of felony assault, to which he pleaded guilty and served nearly five years of probation.

The former couple briefly rekindled their romance in late 2012 before splitting again in mid-2013.

Eminem has worked with Rihanna several times, collaborating on Love the Way You Lie the year after the assault.

They also went on to make Numb in 2012 and The Monster in 2013, and toured together in 2014.

This article was originally published at nzherald.co.nz and is reproduced here with permission