Wendy Day is a woman behind Rap Coalition, the organisation helped many rappers to find their foot in the industry and brought to light the talents of Master P and Eminem.
Forbes magazine published an interview with Wendy Day, including her account on discovering Eminem and creating the whole rap event just to help Marshall show what he was capable of:
Although Day’s portfolio includes some of the world’s top artists, helping launch Eminem’s career is one of her proudest moments. She met him while at an industry event. He was rapping outside of the hotel. Instantaneously she recognized his talent. As she encountered pushback from labels because he was a white rapper, she created the Rap Olympics to showcase his talents.
“I was doing it, first of all, to bring attention to him [Eminem],” Day explains. “So he was on my team. But it was also because at that point in time, gangsta rap was growing. It felt like between Death Row and even Bad Boy Records, which Bad Boy was not really gangsta rap, but the artists that were successful at bad Boy were rapping about flying around in helicopters and popping bottles of champagne. … I could tell that the music was changing. It was going more to storylines than lyrics. People were focusing more on the visual side than the lyrical side. The second reason that I did Rap Olympics is I wanted to bring attention back to lyricism.”
Eminem told this story last year to Mike Tyson on his podcast:
I met Wendy Day, and she put me on her battle team. She had this battle team that was at the event in LA called the Rap Olympics, and she put me on that team. I went out to LA, and we got in that battle at the Rap Olympics, went all the way to the end and lost again to the last dude. And I was super discouraged, I just got evicted from my house, had to break in through the back of the house. The dude that we was paying rent to, he wasn’t paying the rent with it. So one day, this is literally the day before I go to the Rap Olympics. Thank God for Wendy Day because she paid for my plane ticket.
Eminem did not win at the Olympics, but he met Dean Geistlinger, who was impressed enough to pass Eminem’s CD to Jimmy Iovine, who played it to Dr. Dre. The rest is history.
Wendy Day told more about that even on Rap Coalition Instagram responding to Eminem:
In 1996, I took your demo to every label. I tried like crazy to get you a deal for months. Because you were white, in that time and era, I couldn’t get any label to even consider signing you. I had JUST done Twista’s joint venture at Atlantic and was extremely well connected then, and I never expected it to be soooo difficult to get someone so talented (you) a deal. I created RapOlympics to showcase YOU, and to ring national attention back to lyricists in a climate of gangsta rap (reality rap… I hate term gangsta rap).
