Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. opened up about the misunderstanding that pushed his original collaboration with Eminem to become a remix.
In his interview with HipHopDX, B.O.B explained that he initially recorded the version of the song with Eminem’s verse but later his team was told that Eminem would not be interested in making a video for this track. “Aeroplanes” were meant to be a single for his debut album “B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray” so the rapper and his team wanted to promote it as much as possible – and B.O.B. recorded a version without Em, which is now considered to be the first. B.o.B remembers how some college students got a free preview of Eminem’s verse when he listened to Marshall’s take for the first time:
I was on the way to do a show and we played it in the car. I was gonna do a college show, so college kids picked us up in a van. So we played it in the van, and they’ve got to hear it for anybody and I was like, “Oh, shit!”. The only reason… This is how a word passes around the industry and you have no idea what the fuck is happening. The only reason there are two “Aeroplanes” is because somebody said, “Eminem’s not gonna do the video. We have to make a version without him”. And then when I met him down the line he was like “I never said that”. I was like, “Who the fuck said that?! We have two versions!”
This is how wires got crossed, changing the perception of the track. Ironically, the track that was recorded in the protest of how rap politics affects art was, in turn, affected by that politics:
The one with Eminem was the first version we recorded. And then I had to do another version. I guess it’s just because at that time he was coming out of rehab, I guess they did not want his first look to be a feature. I think that’s what it was.
Watch the video below:
Listen to B.o.B “Airplanes, Pt. II” feat. Eminem & Hayley Williams below:
