Paul Rosenberg brought the most important man to his podcast to talk about Eminem’s albums — Marshall Mathers himself. Read his full interview below.
The two started the conversation from where Marshall had left off with “Curtain Call: The Hits”, discussing every album released since. But firstly, they revised original songs that went on the compilation and the difficult circumstances that kept Marshall from the spotlight.
Eminem: “Fack” is on it. Probably my best song ever.
Paul Rosenberg: Yes. “Fack” was a masterpiece.
Eminem: But at the time, you didn’t think so, remember?
Paul Rosenberg: At that time, I thought it was ridiculous, and I still think it’s ridiculous, but now I appreciate its ridiculousness.s
Eminem: The best song I’ve ever made.
Relapse
That’s the album with the bunch of fucking accents on it.
I remember when I first got sober, all the shit was out of my system. I remember just being really happy. Everything was fucking new to me again. It was the first album and the first time I had had fun recording in a long time. During this fun, something happened, and something completely morphed into… A lot of my songs have always been like that like you joke around with friends and shit, and then you might put some of that shit in a song. It was like the first time I started having fun with music again. And re-learning how to rap! You remember this process. It took a long time for my brain to start working again. Didn’t you ask the doctors when I first started rapping again and sent it to you? You said, “I just want to make sure he doesn’t have brain damage”.
[“Detroit Basketball”] was the first shit that I actually wrote, literally, that was the first song. And it was fucking weird because my brain was turning back on. I started going over the lines, like, wait, that’s not good. I don’t know which version leaked, but there was like 20 version of that shit.
For the first recording session we did, when we were serious about recording the album, we went to Florida. I was itching constantly. My fucking skin was crawling. I didn’t realise at the time it was barbiturates coming completely out of my system. I was still withdrawing to an extent. [Before] I was taking 75-80 Valium a night. I was itching and recording.
Dr. Dre was feeding me with beats, and I think “Must Be The Ganja” was the first [song recorded for the album], and then “My Mom” was the second.
Two things came into play. One, I had just started watching a bunch of serial killer documentaries. And it started giving me ideas. Like, I started trying to sound like a demented fucking serial killer. And “Beautiful” came out of earlier sessions when I was still fucked up. It was probably the only decent song I had made during that time. I didn’t want to put it on the album because it didn’t fit the concept of everything else, the accents and all that shit. The accents, they built up. They started getting thicker and thicker. And I don’t even know what fucking accents they are.
In Florida, I don’t know if you remember how fast I was writing! It was fucking crazy.
I don’t have a problem with some of the rhymes, and I don’t have a problem with some of the verse’s choices lyrically. It’s just the accents. I feel like I sounded so demented in that shit, I got cemented in that shit. And then I painted back, bitch, and then I went to scratch itch. It was literally like a fucking awakening, and it happened in fucking 5-10 minutes. Listening to some of my older shit and going, “I need to feel like this again”. On the first song I did, the one Mr. Porter did, “On Fire”.
There is probably enough left to make another “Relapse 2”. But they are terrible songs if they didn’t even make it to the album on “Relapse”. And you know how I feel about “Relapse”. It should say something. There is no “Relapse 2”.
Recovery
At that time, I was looking at how Drake and Wayne started changing the landscape. It also pushed me and motivated me. Remember, “Recovery” was the first album with me back on the wordplay. Because I started getting away from it on “Relapse”. I don’t think there is much of wordplay on it. So I started getting back on that shit. I was watching Wayne like, holy shit, wordplay is back! I was like, I can do that! At the Hip Hop Shop, that was all I cared about back then. That kind of punch line rap and shit like that. One thing that I think made me rediscover wordplay was watching what Wayne was doing.
The first song, it didn’t even make it to the album. I don’t remember what it was called, but I know that “Cold Wind Blows” was the second one I made.
Then Eminem remembers how “Love the Way You Lie” came about when he basically finalised all songs he wanted to put on “Recovery”:
I was done. I was like, “Man, I’m done”. And you were like, “Okay, I know you keep saying you’re done, but I have one beat you need to hear”.
More like a beat and a chorus, Paul reminds and insists he only wanted Em to listen to it: no pressure to work, no obligations. So Marshall agreed, and that’s what happened:
I got it in the car on the way home, and I wrote two verses. Well, a verse and a half.
Then Paul takes over the conversation to tell the story he just recently told in the episode with Skylar Grey:
Paul Rosenberg: Then you called me at home and said, “You’re an asshole”. Because you were mad that I made you keep working on a record that you thought you were done with. You wrote everything very quickly. So you got done your record, your verses, you sent it back to me. And you said, “Okay, here you go, tough guy. I’m done with the record, but now you’ve got to put Rihanna on it. Because in your mind, what you’ve written about and what the chorus was about — she was the only one who could pull it off.
The Marshall Mathers LP2
When I first recorded [Rap God], I was still playing CDs back then. I listened to it in the car, ad when it cuts off, it says, “Six minutes”. You know, the timing on the CD. And I’m like, “What the fuck?! It says exactly six minutes? That’s crazy!” So I went back. In the beginning, I did that “Six minutes. Six minutes”. ‘Cause I didn’t think I knew how long it was at the time. At least until I got in the car. I just fucking made a six minutes song.
The fastest verse on the song starts with the shout-out to J.J. Fad, a rap group that had a song called “Supersonic”, produced by young Dr. Dre and also includes a speedy verse. A line from that song inspired the whole opening sequence of the verse:
For some reason, “summa-lumma, dooma-lumma” stuck in my head one day. And I just kept repeating the phrase, “summa-lumma, dooma-lumma, summa-lumma, dooma-lumma”. That rhymes with a lot of shit. That’s kind of a stunt, I don’t want to call it a stunt, that kind of shit has to be the right words that roll off the tongue, You’ve got to pick the right ones. You have to hit each word. “You assumin’ I’m a human. What I gotta do to get it through to you?” But you have to pick the right phrases and the words that roll off the tongue. Otherwise, it’s going to be sloppy and sound like shit. It just led me to the next phrase and the next phrase. I remember thinking when I wrote it in my head, “When I go to the studio, am I going to able to say this shit?” ‘Cause sometimes the shit that I write, my mouth can’t say it. I don’t know why, but sometimes it happens. The first take of it, I got halfway through it. And I was like, “Okay, cool, I can do it”. You know, okay, I can do it; now, let me focus on saying it the best way that I can.
Later, Eminem performed “Rap God” live at the YouTube music awards. Initially, Paul was not sure it would be possible, but apparently, Marshall wrote it keeping in mind that it had to be performed live. There are pauses for breathing strategically placed in the verse. And that is the rule, Eminem says:
Every day I do something like that, I make sure that my mouth can say it. Because I always keep in mind, Imma has to do this life. So there cannot be no fucking studio trick. I have to be able to actually say it.
“Godzilla” is actually faster. It’s funny because I remember we were thinking back in a day with “Forgot About Dre” that it was some cutting-edge shit. Like, that was the groundbreaking shit or something. But it really is not that fast if you think about it. It’s just gotta be right words, you gotta choose the right words to roll off the tongue.
I knew that [Rihanna] would sound crazy singing [Monster], especially a high part. That’s her shit, so I felt like she could fucking smash it. You know, she’s Rihanna.
The first time I met [Rick Rubin] was with [Paul Rosenberg]. We went to his house, and his house [in Malibu] was still under construction, it was still being built. I went to use his bathroom, and after I used the bathroom, I gotta dry my hands, and there was a paper towel in there, dried my hands, and there was no garbage. So I put the paper towel in the toilet, hit the flush, and it started overflowing. I didn’t want to walk out with a fucking handful of paper towels! There was nothing to put them into! It’s very possible that he knows that I did that. I gotta ask him. I never told him about that.
When we first started working with Rick, I played him a couple of songs, I don’t remember how many I had at the time. I said, well, Paul wanted me to let off the gas a little bit. And he was like, “What? Why would he want to let off the gas? Are you crazy?” Rapping is crazy. Something you said like, “It was hard, it wasn’t digestible”. So I let off the gas. Some people like it when I rap fast, some people don’t. So I was trying to make songs that were more “digestible”. But I’m also always worried that if I just do that, then people are like, “Oh, he fell off. He can’t rap anymore”.
There were a few years when my tinnitus got very bad. The ringing in my ears was almost louder than the music. Slowly but steadily, over time, I started putting more mid-range in my voice because, for whatever reason, that was the tone easiest for my ears to hear the inflections and shit like that. Then we went to LA and saw that doctor and then tinnitus started getting better, I started pulling back on the vocal a little bit and trying to find that, as Royce always calls it, sweet spot. But going back and listening to that shit now I realise, man, I didn’t leave any gaps! There was no parts to be able to breathe.
Bad Meets Evil
I think in the very beginning, it was Royce’s idea to try to get Bruno [Mars on “Lighters”]. What he did was incredible. I thought the original hook was good, but he changed the whole thing. Keeping the concept, but he changed the whole shit. And bro, that dude can fucking sing, Jesus Christ! I don’t even remember now what the original version sounded like, honestly, the original beat. But I do remember that he changed some chords and a bunch of shit that made it feel even better.
Revival
Skylar sent [Walk on Water] to Rick, and then Rick was playing it, but not for me. I think he was just playing it, and I walked in like, what the fuck is that? When he played it I instantly started thinking of lines to it. I was like, yo, give me that, and I’ll record it in the other room. So I sat there and wrote it, and recorded it pretty quick. I wrote the rap, and I wrote it with no drums in it. It’s basically just what you’re hearing in my head, just my vocal and the piano. Once I laid it we kinda knew I shouldn’t put drums in it. I think it was [Rick’s] idea to try to get Beyonce to do it. I was like, man, she ain’t doing that shit. There is no fucking way. She’s really big. She’s got a lot going on. I just thought that was a stab in the dark, it was a fantasy thing. If we could get her, oh my god, that should be crazy, and if we couldn’t, I didn’t want to let myself down. The fact that she did it was crazy to me. She killed it. She fucking smashed it.
The next episode starts with discussing the reception “Revival” got from music critics, and no doubt it is going to be a difficult conversation.
