Before Eminem became part of hip hop’s curriculum, he was a student with a Walkman, a blank cassette, and an obsession with figuring out how the greats did it.
In a new Shade 45 special, Back to School (Da Ol’ Skool Way), Marshall goes back to the beginning: Uncle Ronnie playing him the Breakin’ soundtrack, LL COOL J making rap feel larger than life, Rakim changing how he heard rhyme patterns, and Detroit radio feeding him whatever fragments of hip hop he could catch.
Hosted by D-Stroy, with Paul Rosenberg joining in, the interview turns childhood memory into lesson in hip hop. It is Eminem explaining how he studied rap before realising, years later, that other rappers had started studying him.
The interview opened with a jingle, one of many Eminem pre-recorded for this “Back to School (Da Ol’ Skool Way)” special:
Welcome to Back to School (Da Ol’ Skool Way). I’m Eminem, and apparently I’m the teacher with my assistant D-Stroy, which is already a terrible idea.
D-Stroy: Listen, guys, everybody get locked in. Yes, we are doing this Back to School (Da Ol’ Skool Way) with the legendary, the iconic, the father of your style – Eminem. What’s going on, my brother? Everything is wonderful on your side, or what?
Eminem: Yeah, bro. Everything is good. How you doing?
Comics
D-Stroy: Listen, man, before Eminem, before Slim Shady, we are here to talk about young Marshall discovering hip hop. So Em, I’m not here to interview Slim Shady today. It’s going to be young Marshall, the kid in the room, hanging out, discovering hip hop. Let’s get into it. Okay.
So, before hip hop became your life, you wanted to be a comic book artist, do some wonderful, cool things that I had the honour of seeing, some great art. The artwork for the Re-Up, how long did that take you?
Paul: You did it in sections, right?
Eminem: Yeah, I did it in sections. It took me like 2 months. I drew everybody separately, and then we had to put them in the computer and shrink them down to the same size. Yeah, that shit was time-consuming. I’ll never do it again. That shit was fun. Once I got into it and I started drawing everybody, I’m like, “Yo, I might as well draw the whole thing”. I knew we were doing the Re-Up album, from what I remember about it. I knew we were doing the album, and we needed artwork for it. I didn’t know what the cover was going to be, but since I was going through that phase where I was taking a lot of drugs and drawing… That’s what my thing was.
Paul: You would look at a photo of somebody and then draw it from looking at the photo, right?
Eminem: That’s how I learned from comic books when I was a kid. Just look at what you… I’m not great at drawing out of my imagination. I have to actually look at something, and I can draw what I see. I’m not as good at drawing something out of my head, necessarily, for some reason. But if I can see a drawing and draw it almost exactly like the fuck it is, if I see it.
Discovering hip hop
D-Stroy: Salute to all the comic book heads out there. So in that room when Uncle Ronnie first played the Breakin’ soundtrack, what was it about that moment that stuck with you?
Eminem: I can’t remember if I had already seen the movie and he brought the soundtrack over or vice versa. No, vice versa, because he brought the soundtrack over, and that’s what made me want to see the movie. So “Reckless”, he played Ice-T “Reckless”, and then Ice-T was in the movie, and I was like, “Oh, shit”.
D-Stroy: He’s credited in that film as the Rap Talker.
Paul: And was it Ice Tea or his real name?
D-Stroy: It was Tracy. Yeah, the Rap Talker.
Paul: Oh wow. Tracy the Rap Talker. That’s so wild.
Eminem: Yeah, that day, I mean, in hindsight now, that day changed my life forever.
D-Stroy: Now, how many times did you really watch Breakin’ over and over, or were you really connecting with that?
Eminem: Yeah, I don’t remember if we had cable at our house at that time or not. I might have had to go to friends’ houses to watch it.
Paul: It was in theatres though. You might have seen it there.
Eminem: No, I didn’t see it in theatres. I saw it when it came out on cable. That’s why I think Uncle Ronnie had the cassette first. He brought the soundtrack. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the movie. ‘Cause I’ve watched it in my adulthood 100,000 times, too.
D-Stroy: So amazing. I was lucky to have Beat Street on Betamax. Hood shit. Classic. So, listen, Em, right here, right now. Back to school vibes. Getting to that young Marshall energy. You’re at your grandma Nan’s house, right? And you’re listening to The Wizard on WJLB. What did it feel like hearing all these different sounds coming through Detroit radio?
Eminem: It was amazing because back then I might have had one or two cassettes. I didn’t have many. I just had blank cassettes. So I would go to sleep that night, hit record, record “The Wizard,” and go to sleep. Get up the next morning and see what I got. Sometimes it’d be frustrating because he’d only play one verse of “Go See the Doctor” by Kool Moe Dee, and then it would go into something else. And you’d be like, “Fuck, I want to hear the rest of the song!”
Paul: He would mix up different genres. He would play house, and he would play hip hop, and he would play R&B and funk and techno, and he would mix it all together because that’s what was going on in Detroit.
Eminem: Yeah. That’s how I was getting my rap songs at that time. And then, I remember, I bought a bootleg Paid in Full at a gas station for $3. Rakim changed the game, changed the whole genre. I was getting rap in bits and pieces. I was a sponge, so I would take whatever I could get, and I didn’t even know I wanted to rap yet.
D-Stroy: Now, if you can, name a song that represents young Marshall discovering hip hop.
Eminem: “Reckless”. Yeah. And “Jam On It”, Newcleus.
Paul: You used to spin on your back to that record. Don’t front.
Eminem: I used to break dance as a kid. My uncle Ronnie used to break dance. He taught me how to do it.
Paul: I tried to spin on my head once. Once. Didn’t try it again.
Eminem: Why don’t you try it again today?
Paul: No way. I think I was like, 12 and I hurt myself.
Eminem: At 12, you were probably eight feet tall.
Paul: No, I was a fudgy ball of dough, and I had no business trying to do anything standing on my head.
Eminem: Yeah, I wasn’t very good at head spinning.
LL Cool J
D-Stroy: What did LL J teach you that had nothing to do with music?
Eminem: Well, at first it was everything to do with music because when Radio came out, I remember I was 11. Radio came out, and that was like the first album I had. I got that tape for Christmas, and it was the first, like, full rap cassette I had. I used to just play it on repeat, front to back, front to back, front to back. So he impacted me music-wise, and then later in my career, like, I remember reading his book, and a lot of the shit he went through- a lot of the same shit I went through as a kid- so I could relate to some of that. But I didn’t really know that about him until adulthood, when I read the book. Stepdad and shit like that.
But I connected with some of that shit, and I connected with like a lot of his struggles and shit as a kid. That just made me connect with him more as a person. But musically, he had already impacted my life and changed it. He was what made me want to rap in the first place, being, I think, 11 or 12. I think 12, maybe. I wrote my first rap, and it was just like LL Cool J. Actually, I think I was 13 because B.A.D. had come out. That’s when I wrote my first rap because it sounded just like B.A.D., his second album. Radio – I didn’t even want to rap yet; I just loved it. I didn’t even try yet.
D-Stroy: Wasn’t there a time when you used to stand on the street with a boom box, performing his songs, with the cars passing by?
Eminem: At my Aunt Edna’s house, mhm. I used to set my little radio on the front lawn and face it up, so the speakers are pointing up to the sky, and just play that shit and perform it, while cars were driving by in the street.
Paul: Then they thought you were an absolute madman. The Rap Talker, Marshall Mathers.
D-Stroy: Before you ever had a stage of your own, whose performance made you think, if I ever get the chance, that’s how I’m going to hold it down?
Eminem: There were a lot of rappers, several in the beginning stages of hip hop, like Melly Mel, Run-DMC… Run-DMC when they came out, man, their swagger was so crazy, and they were so confident – it just made you want to be them. The first video I saw by them was “King of Rock” that was at my aunt’s house. I was like, “Bro, they’re so cool. I just want to be like them”. And then, LL. Run-DMC were like the first rock stars of rap, and then LL was like the first rock star solo. Fat Boys… Rappers from that era had this aura about them and this swag that just made you look up to them. They were so fucking cool, you just wanted to be him as a kid.
Paul: I remember the way that LL performed in the “B.A.D.” video. How he was moving,.
Eminem: The confidence, right? Being a kid, you wish you had that. And it’s crazy when you think – LL was a kid himself.
Paul: Yeah. I wish I had it now, right?
Eminem: Yeah. I wish I had any confidence right now.
D-Stroy: Em, hit me with an LL Cool J banger that resonated with young Marshall and made you be like, “Holy smokes!”
Eminem: Bro, that’s like eating cereal and which Frosted Flake is your favourite one while you’re eating it? He had so many songs. I knew so many albums from him by heart. There are too many to name. One of my favourites- I mean, anything off B.A.D., anything off Radio, anything off Walking With a Panther, “Eat Them Up L Chill”. He held that shit down for so many albums in a row. He might have had more classics than any rapper I’ve ever heard.
Rhyming schemes
D-Stroy: Who was the first MC whose flow made you think, “How did this person even do this?”
Eminem: Man, there were a few. Kane, G-Rap, Rakim, Red Man. I remember, when I first heard multi-syllables, I didn’t really understand that they were connecting three, four, five syllables at one time. So, I kind of didn’t hear it until I started hearing other rappers do it. And then Kane came out and did it, and G-Rap did it on “The Symphony”. I was like, “Wait a minute, they’re rhyming three-, four-, five-, six-syllable words, and every syllable of it is rhyming”. So, I would take words on the paper, and I would make a phrase like, “Transcendentalistic tendencies can bend all mystic sentence trees”. Even if it didn’t make sense, I would put it on the paper, and I would line up the syllables underneath each phrase, so that every syllable rhymed, until I got better and better at it. Enough to make it make sense. At first I was rhyming one and two syllables.
Paul: Right. Cat, hat, bat. Wasn’t Rakim one of the first guys you heard do that?
Eminem: I think so. I think he was the first one. Plus, he had that delivery and the voice. The way he said that shit. It was noticeably more complex, but I couldn’t figure out at the time why it was so much more complex than anything that had been out at that point yet.
Paul: He used not just to rhyme multi-syllable words, but he would have words connect within the rhyme itself, within the stanza. So it wouldn’t just be the end of rhyming; it would be interlocked within the sentence.
Eminem: He would have internal rhyme schemes, and he’d rhyme inside the line. G-Rap was great at doing that, too. They would rhyme inside the line, and then come back with what they originally started rhyming with. Like, trophy case, and then shan-da-la-la dum-da-da, and then won’t be space, right? And you’re like, what the fuck just happened there? Hold on. He’s rhyming this word, but then inside he sandwiched two rhymes together.
Paul: The complexity was wild, especially for back then. I always marvelled at it and still do. When you heard one of his songs, it sounded like something that had been there forever – because of his voice. It wasn’t like, oh, this is new. It sounded like something that just existed. It’s hard to explain.
Eminem: And the cover of that album is so iconic, bro. Paid in Full. ”I take seven MC’s, put ‘em in a line, then add seven more brothers who think they can rhyme”. I was like, why does this sound so dope? How the fuck did he think of that, and then add it all up? Nobody had done that yet at that point in rap. It was so new, and it was so fucking crazy. You had Rakim, and then Kane came out, and then G-Rap, and then Masta Ace and Redman. They kept pushing the genre of lyricism forward. Then Nas, Pac, Big kept pushing the genre forward with lyrical complexity like we had never heard yet.
You didn’t know when rap was in its beginning infancy stages; it was bat, hat, and cat, and there were no rules to it yet.
Paul: You didn’t know what was possible ‘cause it hadn’t happened yet.
Eminem: Hadn’t happened yet. And then when you hear Radio, then you were like, wait a minute, there’s three syllables in that, and each one’s rhyming. And then you go to four syllables and five syllables, and then you’re rhyming the whole… Rakim used to rhyme the whole sentences. “Pass the hand grenade”, there are so many of them where he would rhyme the entire sentence. And every rhyme, every word on that bar – if you wrote them down on a pad of paper and you put them up underneath each other – every single syllable would rhyme for a whole sentence. Didn’t know you could do that. And have it make sense. When people talk about “lyrical miracle rap” and
all that shit – it doesn’t make you better just because of this much lyrical complexity, but it is part of a skill set that you learn in hip hop. It’s kind of like Hip hop 101. So when I hear rappers that don’t do it, I’m like, how do you not know how to do this? Like, this is like 101 to me. When I watch battle rappers, they’re rhyming whole sentences and multi-syllables to death. It’s part of a skill set that is great to have because the more you are able to rhyme a bunch of syllables together and put it together to make it make sense. That’s the hardest thing to do. So when you’re able to do that, that is part of a skill set. Taste, and music taste, is subjective, but skill set is not subjective. It’s like a basketball player. Like dribbling the ball between his legs and reverse dunking. That’s a skill set. That doesn’t make you LeBron James, but it means you have a skill set that is essential for you to even compete.
D-Stroy: Bars. It’s hard to find Masta Ace’s Take a Look Around.
Paul: Is it not on streaming?
D-Stroy: It’s not! That or the Cold Chillin’, Kool G-Rap. It’s crazy! Anyway, if you can hold me down on some greatness with Masta Ace, what is one of those favourite bangers from Masta Ace and the album that are still with you?
Eminem: Well, to me, his first two albums are classic. I couldn’t tell you which one. They’re both so different from each other. I couldn’t really tell you which one I liked. It probably depends on the mood I was in. But the SlaughtaHouse record did change the game. That album did change the game for me. I was studying how he was. Masta Ace was great and still is to this day, great at internal rhyme schemes and the same shit that Kane and G-Rap do. I’m trying to think of an example of what Masta Ace said that would be my favourite.
I am the man, but I’m not the one with the can in his hand
I’m down with a different kind of street band
And I appear from place to place as the Music Man, AKA Masta Ace
Stacks of flyers are pressed up
All the party people are home gettin’ dressed up
Just to hear the sound of the underground
Fusion, and the bass like thunder pound
Wait, what the fuck was it? I just missed it. I missed the internal rhyme right there in the “bass like thunder”. All over that album, he’s doing internal rhyme schemes that are just bananas. Especially for that time period, I feel like only a select few were doing it at that level at that time. Everyone hadn’t really caught on yet. So the few that did were teaching everybody else how to do it.
D-Stroy: So we could get into a Masta Ace joint right now. Is it “Music Man”? Oh, SlaughtaHouse! What a fucking album that!
Eminem: Yeah. Amazing. But I would say “Music Man” first because I heard his verse on “The Symphony” first. But “Music Man” is an example of when he found his style and he found who he was. That was a great song to the beat produced by Marley Marl. I would say that one first.
Redman
D-Stroy: What did Redman teach you about boss’s personality and having fun?
Eminem: Whut? Thee Album was one of the most classic hip hop albums of all time. When he came out with that first album, it sounded so sonically different, and his delivery was so captivating. Because his voice had so much body on it, bass and depth, and just the right amount of everything on it. Redman was one of those artists who would drop an album, then get better on the next, and then even better on the next. So by the time Muddy Waters and Doc’s Da Name came out, he had pushed the pen to the limit. And when he said “rob ’em at the ATM with a staple gun,” I was like, what the fuck? How the fuck did he just make ATM and staple gun rhyme, and they sound like they rhyme? And that was like he was one of the first people I heard to do that. And the Outsidaz were doing that, too, when I met them. There’s not really any rules to this shit anymore. You can take two words that naturally don’t rhyme, and you can enunciate them to make them rhyme. That’s what opened a whole new world for me when I heard Redman do that for the first time. I was like, what the fuck? That whole verse, he was doing it. He was rhyming shit that shouldn’t have been rhymed. But Doc’s Da Name and Muddy Waters, those albums, he was just bending the fucking words.
D-Stroy: Did he show you that you could be technical without taking yourself too seriously?
Eminem: Redman was very well-rounded in his sense that when he first came out he had, still to this day he has, funny shit, stories. He was great at telling stories. He was great at humour. He was great at being funny, and he was also raw at the same time. A lot of those songs he had with Method Man, they were competing with each other and pushing each other’s pen to the next level. Redman was one of the most well-rounded rappers who could do it all.
D-Stroy: A lot of bangers in that catalogue of Redman’s. Please, Em, I need a heater, a Redman banger to play right now.
Eminem: What is the one I just said? It is “Hardcore”. “Cause ever since I was an infant, I was different Paid no attention to my moms when she rifted”. [The quote is from “Rated R”]
Pharoahe Monch
D-Stroy: Another athlete on the mic. We’re talking about Pharoahe Monch now. Rhyme patterns. He makes a lot of folks just wonder. What’s one of those Pharoahe Monch’s rhymes or performances that still blows your mind and you have to listen back to take it all in?
Eminem: His verse on “Bring It On”. At that time I never heard nobody do that shit.
I even be getting more graphic than a Neo Geo thirty-two-bit
Computer chip be slipped between my lips, and then I’ll spit!
Spit it out, spit it out, go ahead, spit it out, that itty-bitty style you upchuck
Better believe I butt-fuck emcees
He’s doing multi-syllables but flipping.
Paul: It’s still impressive. I think if you hear it now, you’d be like, “What the fuck?”
Eminem: There are some of the top rappers in the game right now cannot out-rap that shit from how many years ago is that? 30 years ago. That’s crazy. Him and Prince Po, they pushed each other’s pen to the limit. That style, where they were all over the beat cause both of them had verses that were crazy on that. And it was just like they were falling in and out of the pocket.
Paul: It all had the delivery. Complexity plus the way he moved around on the beat was next level.
Eminem: The pockets. The pockets where the words were hitting the beat.
Treach
D-Stroy: Guys, the “Bring It On” remix is something that we have to get on. Super classic. Salute to Organized Konfusion. Their debut album is celebrating 35 years. But let’s get into some Treach verses that are almost wild to listen to. What’s one of those songs from Treach or verses that make you think about breath control and physicality as part of being an MC?
Eminem: There are several with Treach, but if it were gonna be the first thing you listen to from him, I would say “Yoke the Joker” because that was the first thing I heard. I heard “You’re Down with O.P.P.” And I love that. I love the flow, I love the pockets. But when I heard “Yoke the Joker”, because of the seriousness of the song, the intensity, and the passion that he rapped with, I was like, oh, fuck. When I heard “O.P.P.”, I was competitively rapping with all the rappers. Even though they didn’t hear me, I heard them, and I was trying to compete with them. And when I heard Treach for the first time, bro, I didn’t write for the whole summer. I’ve said that story before. I didn’t know he was going to be a fucking problem like that. And then when I played that album front to back the first time, every song kept getting more lyrically complex, and every flow. He was a master of doing so many different styles on one album. I was just like, yo, I’ll never be that good. I don’t even want to do this anymore.
Performing live
D-Stroy: When it comes to one of your own songs, which one, with breath control and all that stuff, that you’re most comfortable with performing on stage without worrying about you not landing the words?
Eminem: “Sing for the Moment”. Any of the slower ones, I’m always good on those usually.
Paul: “My Name Is”.
Eminem: “My Name Is”, yeah. You know, some of the faster ones, it’s like, fuck…
Paul: “Rap God”.
Eminem: Yeah, cause there’s no breaths there. There’s no breaths in that “summa-lumma, dooma-lumma” part. I forgot to write any space for breaths.
D-Stroy: Yeah, that’s wild. So, Naughty by Nature. We could do the joint you were talking about, or we could do “Yoke the Joker”, or we could do something else.
Eminem: Treach taught me that. I didn’t know what he was doing with the delivery, but he was using his upper palate. So, he be like, “We ’bout to bully ya ass around
Pull you and smack it down”. I was like, what the fuck? How’s he doing that? And it’s just using your upper palate more. I paid attention to that, too. ’Cause in his delivery was so much conviction.
Paul: What about “Uptown Anthem”? Let’s do that. That’s one of those deliveries.
Eminem: Yeah, yeah. That is the pinnacle right there of rapping bodies.
Hip hop syllabus
D-Stroy: Now we’re talking hip hop syllabus, if you can. Young Marshall becomes the teacher. You spent years studying these artists, and new generations of MCs are studying as well. If you had a chance to give every rapper a listening assignment, one album. One album! We talked about one song, but one album every kid heading back to school should hear before they graduate. Come on, Eminem Gonzalez. The time is now.
Eminem: Illmatic. Nas. Anything from Tupac.
Paul: Which G-Rap album?
Eminem: I didn’t know I was coming here to get grilled, bro.
D-Stroy: Yo, Paul, fall back, B. What’s wrong with you, B? That’s a banger though. Illmatic, Nas. Did you ever get another sealed Illmatic?
Eminem: I do have one. A sealed one. It is in my collection. I don’t even touch that motherfucker. I have one that I listen to, and then I have one that’s unopened. Actually, I have two sealed of Illmatic.
D-Stroy: Beautiful. Makes me happy to hear that. Last question right here. You started as a kid with a Walkman, studying everybody you could. Now you’re the person young artists are studying. When did you first realise you had gone from being the student to becoming part of somebody else’s hip hop education?
Eminem: Wow. I think being in the underground scene was definitely a learning experience for me. I don’t know if I had realised that yet, though. When the album dropped, I first started hearing other rappers. I felt like they were trying to sound like me. And I was like, “Wait, what the fuck? They’re trying to sound like me? Probably ’99. After the Slim Shady LP dropped, there were some rappers coming up in the underground. I don’t think I was there yet. Everybody had their own shit and I didn’t realise till the first album dropped that now rappers were starting to sound like me. Pretty fucking wild. Pretty fucking wild, man.
Detroit hip hop scene
D-Stroy: At the time you had a lot of representation for East Coast and West Coast in hip hop. How important was it for you to bring in Detroit’s sound to the whole culture?
Eminem: That definitely was fun. When I first came out, I was just telling my story, being so influenced by other Detroit MC’s – Eye Kyu, Proof. But I don’t know if I was trying to put Detroit on, because Detroit already had rappers with major deals. Awesome Dré. There were a lot of really good Detroit rappers, but it was fun to see the city get worldwide attention. It was an honour for me to be part of that.
D-Stroy: Eminem, thank you so much for your time, for hanging out, for breaking down some wonderful classic albums and projects and discussing a lot of artists that many should know. Anything else you’d like to say before we get out of here and celebrate Labour Day weekend?
Eminem: If we were in the studio, all of us together at the same time, I would break dance for you guys.
And after joking a bit more about Paul Rosenberg’s rap persona, Eminem signed off.
By the end, the interview circles back to the classroom joke that framed the whole special. Eminem may laugh at the idea of being “the teacher”, but that is exactly where the conversation leaves him: still a fan, still a student of the craft, and now one of the artists younger rappers study.
Then the bell rings.
That’s the bell. Class dismissed. I’m Eminem. Thanks for going back to school. Da Ol’ Skool Way with D-Stroy and me.
D-Stroy: What did LL J teach you that had nothing to do with music?
Eminem: Well, at first it was everything to do with music because when Radio came out, I remember I was 11. Radio came out, and that was like the first album I had. I got that tape for Christmas, and it was the first, like, full rap cassette I had. I used to just play it on repeat, front to back, front to back, front to back. So he impacted me music-wise, and then later in my career, like, I remember reading his book, and a lot of the shit he went through- a lot of the same shit I went through as a kid- so I could relate to some of that. But I didn’t really know that about him until adulthood, when I read the book. Stepdad and shit like that.
But I connected with some of that shit, and I connected with like a lot of his struggles and shit as a kid. That just made me connect with him more as a person. But musically, he had already impacted my life and changed it. He was what made me want to rap in the first place, being, I think, 11 or 12. I think 12, maybe. I wrote my first rap, and it was just like LL Cool J. Actually, I think I was 13 because B.A.D. had come out. That’s when I wrote my first rap because it sounded just like B.A.D., his second album. Radio – I didn’t even want to rap yet; I just loved it. I didn’t even try yet.
D-Stroy: Wasn’t there a time when you used to stand on the street with a boom box, performing his songs, with the cars passing by?
Eminem: At my Aunt Edna’s house, mhm. I used to set my little radio on the front lawn and face it up, so the speakers are pointing up to the sky, and just play that shit and perform it, while cars were driving by in the street.
Paul: Then they thought you were an absolute madman. The Rap Talker, Marshall Mathers.
D-Stroy: Before you ever had a stage of your own, whose performance made you think, if I ever get the chance, that’s how I’m going to hold it down?
Eminem: There were a lot of rappers, several in the beginning stages of hip hop, like Melly Mel, Run-DMC… Run-DMC when they came out, man, their swagger was so crazy, and they were so confident – it just made you want to be them. The first video I saw by them was “King of Rock” that was at my aunt’s house. I was like, “Bro, they’re so cool. I just want to be like them”. And then, LL. Run-DMC were like the first rock stars of rap, and then LL was like the first rock star solo. Fat Boys… Rappers from that era had this aura about them and this swag that just made you look up to them. They were so fucking cool, you just wanted to be him as a kid.
Paul: I remember the way that LL performed in the “B.A.D.” video. How he was moving,.
Eminem: The confidence, right? Being a kid, you wish you had that. And it’s crazy when you think – LL was a kid himself.
Paul: Yeah. I wish I had it now, right?
Eminem: Yeah. I wish I had any confidence right now.
D-Stroy: Em, hit me with an LL Cool J banger that resonated with young Marshall and made you be like, “Holy smokes!”
Eminem: Bro, that’s like eating cereal and which Frosted Flake is your favourite one while you’re eating it? He had so many songs. I knew so many albums from him by heart. There are too many to name. One of my favourites- I mean, anything off B.A.D., anything off Radio, anything off Walking With a Panther, “Eat Them Up L Chill”. He held that shit down for so many albums in a row. He might have had more classics than any rapper I’ve ever heard.
Rhyming schemes
D-Stroy: Who was the first MC whose flow made you think, “How did this person even do this?”
Eminem: Man, there were a few. Kane, G-Rap, Rakim, Red Man. I remember, when I first heard multi-syllables, I didn’t really understand that they were connecting three, four, five syllables at one time. So, I kind of didn’t hear it until I started hearing other rappers do it. And then Kane came out and did it, and G-Rap did it on “The Symphony”. I was like, “Wait a minute, they’re rhyming three-, four-, five-, six-syllable words, and every syllable of it is rhyming”. So, I would take words on the paper, and I would make a phrase like, “Transcendentalistic tendencies can bend all mystic sentence trees”. Even if it didn’t make sense, I would put it on the paper, and I would line up the syllables underneath each phrase, so that every syllable rhymed, until I got better and better at it. Enough to make it make sense. At first I was rhyming one and two syllables.
Paul: Right. Cat, hat, bat. Wasn’t Rakim one of the first guys you heard do that?
Eminem: I think so. I think he was the first one. Plus, he had that delivery and the voice. The way he said that shit. It was noticeably more complex, but I couldn’t figure out at the time why it was so much more complex than anything that had been out at that point yet.
Paul: He used not just to rhyme multi-syllable words, but he would have words connect within the rhyme itself, within the stanza. So it wouldn’t just be the end of rhyming; it would be interlocked within the sentence.
Eminem: He would have internal rhyme schemes, and he’d rhyme inside the line. G-Rap was great at doing that, too. They would rhyme inside the line, and then come back with what they originally started rhyming with. Like, trophy case, and then shan-da-la-la dum-da-da, and then won’t be space, right? And you’re like, what the fuck just happened there? Hold on. He’s rhyming this word, but then inside he sandwiched two rhymes together.
Paul: The complexity was wild, especially for back then. I always marvelled at it and still do. When you heard one of his songs, it sounded like something that had been there forever – because of his voice. It wasn’t like, oh, this is new. It sounded like something that just existed. It’s hard to explain.
Eminem: And the cover of that album is so iconic, bro. Paid in Full. ”I take seven MC’s, put ‘em in a line, then add seven more brothers who think they can rhyme”. I was like, why does this sound so dope? How the fuck did he think of that, and then add it all up? Nobody had done that yet at that point in rap. It was so new, and it was so fucking crazy. You had Rakim, and then Kane came out, and then G-Rap, and then Masta Ace and Redman. They kept pushing the genre of lyricism forward. Then Nas, Pac, Big kept pushing the genre forward with lyrical complexity like we had never heard yet.
You didn’t know when rap was in its beginning infancy stages; it was bat, hat, and cat, and there were no rules to it yet.
Paul: You didn’t know what was possible ‘cause it hadn’t happened yet.
Eminem: Hadn’t happened yet. And then when you hear Radio, then you were like, wait a minute, there’s three syllables in that, and each one’s rhyming. And then you go to four syllables and five syllables, and then you’re rhyming the whole… Rakim used to rhyme the whole sentences. “Pass the hand grenade”, there are so many of them where he would rhyme the entire sentence. And every rhyme, every word on that bar – if you wrote them down on a pad of paper and you put them up underneath each other – every single syllable would rhyme for a whole sentence. Didn’t know you could do that. And have it make sense. When people talk about “lyrical miracle rap” and
all that shit – it doesn’t make you better just because of this much lyrical complexity, but it is part of a skill set that you learn in hip hop. It’s kind of like Hip hop 101. So when I hear rappers that don’t do it, I’m like, how do you not know how to do this? Like, this is like 101 to me. When I watch battle rappers, they’re rhyming whole sentences and multi-syllables to death. It’s part of a skill set that is great to have because the more you are able to rhyme a bunch of syllables together and put it together to make it make sense. That’s the hardest thing to do. So when you’re able to do that, that is part of a skill set. Taste, and music taste, is subjective, but skill set is not subjective. It’s like a basketball player. Like dribbling the ball between his legs and reverse dunking. That’s a skill set. That doesn’t make you LeBron James, but it means you have a skill set that is essential for you to even compete.
D-Stroy: Bars. It’s hard to find Masta Ace’s Take a Look Around.
Paul: Is it not on streaming?
D-Stroy: It’s not! That or the Cold Chillin’, Kool G-Rap. It’s crazy! Anyway, if you can hold me down on some greatness with Masta Ace, what is one of those favourite bangers from Masta Ace and the album that are still with you?
Eminem: Well, to me, his first two albums are classic. I couldn’t tell you which one. They’re both so different from each other. I couldn’t really tell you which one I liked. It probably depends on the mood I was in. But the SlaughtaHouse record did change the game. That album did change the game for me. I was studying how he was. Masta Ace was great and still is to this day, great at internal rhyme schemes and the same shit that Kane and G-Rap do. I’m trying to think of an example of what Masta Ace said that would be my favourite.
I am the man, but I’m not the one with the can in his hand
I’m down with a different kind of street band
And I appear from place to place as the Music Man, AKA Masta Ace
Stacks of flyers are pressed up
All the party people are home gettin’ dressed up
Just to hear the sound of the underground
Fusion, and the bass like thunder pound
Wait, what the fuck was it? I just missed it. I missed the internal rhyme right there in the “bass like thunder”. All over that album, he’s doing internal rhyme schemes that are just bananas. Especially for that time period, I feel like only a select few were doing it at that level at that time. Everyone hadn’t really caught on yet. So the few that did were teaching everybody else how to do it.
D-Stroy: So we could get into a Masta Ace joint right now. Is it “Music Man”? Oh, SlaughtaHouse! What a fucking album that!
Eminem: Yeah. Amazing. But I would say “Music Man” first because I heard his verse on “The Symphony” first. But “Music Man” is an example of when he found his style and he found who he was. That was a great song to the beat produced by Marley Marl. I would say that one first.
Redman
D-Stroy: What did Redman teach you about boss’s personality and having fun?
Eminem: Whut? Thee Album was one of the most classic hip hop albums of all time. When he came out with that first album, it sounded so sonically different, and his delivery was so captivating. Because his voice had so much body on it, bass and depth, and just the right amount of everything on it. Redman was one of those artists who would drop an album, then get better on the next, and then even better on the next. So by the time Muddy Waters and Doc’s Da Name came out, he had pushed the pen to the limit. And when he said “rob ’em at the ATM with a staple gun,” I was like, what the fuck? How the fuck did he just make ATM and staple gun rhyme, and they sound like they rhyme? And that was like he was one of the first people I heard to do that. And the Outsidaz were doing that, too, when I met them. There’s not really any rules to this shit anymore. You can take two words that naturally don’t rhyme, and you can enunciate them to make them rhyme. That’s what opened a whole new world for me when I heard Redman do that for the first time. I was like, what the fuck? That whole verse, he was doing it. He was rhyming shit that shouldn’t have been rhymed. But Doc’s Da Name and Muddy Waters, those albums, he was just bending the fucking words.
D-Stroy: Did he show you that you could be technical without taking yourself too seriously?
Eminem: Redman was very well-rounded in his sense that when he first came out he had, still to this day he has, funny shit, stories. He was great at telling stories. He was great at humour. He was great at being funny, and he was also raw at the same time. A lot of those songs he had with Method Man, they were competing with each other and pushing each other’s pen to the next level. Redman was one of the most well-rounded rappers who could do it all.
D-Stroy: A lot of bangers in that catalogue of Redman’s. Please, Em, I need a heater, a Redman banger to play right now.
Eminem: What is the one I just said? It is “Hardcore”. “Cause ever since I was an infant, I was different Paid no attention to my moms when she rifted”. [The quote is from “Rated R”]
Pharoahe Monch
D-Stroy: Another athlete on the mic. We’re talking about Pharoahe Monch now. Rhyme patterns. He makes a lot of folks just wonder. What’s one of those Pharoahe Monch’s rhymes or performances that still blows your mind and you have to listen back to take it all in?
Eminem: His verse on “Bring It On”. At that time I never heard nobody do that shit.
I even be getting more graphic than a Neo Geo thirty-two-bit
Computer chip be slipped between my lips, and then I’ll spit!
Spit it out, spit it out, go ahead, spit it out, that itty-bitty style you upchuck
Better believe I butt-fuck emcees
He’s doing multi-syllables but flipping.
Paul: It’s still impressive. I think if you hear it now, you’d be like, “What the fuck?”
Eminem: There are some of the top rappers in the game right now cannot out-rap that shit from how many years ago is that? 30 years ago. That’s crazy. Him and Prince Po, they pushed each other’s pen to the limit. That style, where they were all over the beat cause both of them had verses that were crazy on that. And it was just like they were falling in and out of the pocket.
Paul: It all had the delivery. Complexity plus the way he moved around on the beat was next level.
Eminem: The pockets. The pockets where the words were hitting the beat.
Treach
D-Stroy: Guys, the “Bring It On” remix is something that we have to get on. Super classic. Salute to Organized Konfusion. Their debut album is celebrating 35 years. But let’s get into some Treach verses that are almost wild to listen to. What’s one of those songs from Treach or verses that make you think about breath control and physicality as part of being an MC?
Eminem: There are several with Treach, but if it were gonna be the first thing you listen to from him, I would say “Yoke the Joker” because that was the first thing I heard. I heard “You’re Down with O.P.P.” And I love that. I love the flow, I love the pockets. But when I heard “Yoke the Joker”, because of the seriousness of the song, the intensity, and the passion that he rapped with, I was like, oh, fuck. When I heard “O.P.P.”, I was competitively rapping with all the rappers. Even though they didn’t hear me, I heard them, and I was trying to compete with them. And when I heard Treach for the first time, bro, I didn’t write for the whole summer. I’ve said that story before. I didn’t know he was going to be a fucking problem like that. And then when I played that album front to back the first time, every song kept getting more lyrically complex, and every flow. He was a master of doing so many different styles on one album. I was just like, yo, I’ll never be that good. I don’t even want to do this anymore.
Performing live
D-Stroy: When it comes to one of your own songs, which one, with breath control and all that stuff, that you’re most comfortable with performing on stage without worrying about you not landing the words?
Eminem: “Sing for the Moment”. Any of the slower ones, I’m always good on those usually.
Paul: “My Name Is”.
Eminem: “My Name Is”, yeah. You know, some of the faster ones, it’s like, fuck…
Paul: “Rap God”.
Eminem: Yeah, cause there’s no breaths there. There’s no breaths in that “summa-lumma, dooma-lumma” part. I forgot to write any space for breaths.
D-Stroy: Yeah, that’s wild. So, Naughty by Nature. We could do the joint you were talking about, or we could do “Yoke the Joker”, or we could do something else.
Eminem: Treach taught me that. I didn’t know what he was doing with the delivery, but he was using his upper palate. So, he be like, “We ’bout to bully ya ass around
Pull you and smack it down”. I was like, what the fuck? How’s he doing that? And it’s just using your upper palate more. I paid attention to that, too. ’Cause in his delivery was so much conviction.
Paul: What about “Uptown Anthem”? Let’s do that. That’s one of those deliveries.
Eminem: Yeah, yeah. That is the pinnacle right there of rapping bodies.
Hip hop syllabus
D-Stroy: Now we’re talking hip hop syllabus, if you can. Young Marshall becomes the teacher. You spent years studying these artists, and new generations of MCs are studying as well. If you had a chance to give every rapper a listening assignment, one album. One album! We talked about one song, but one album every kid heading back to school should hear before they graduate. Come on, Eminem Gonzalez. The time is now.
Eminem: Illmatic. Nas. Anything from Tupac.
Paul: Which G-Rap album?
Eminem: I didn’t know I was coming here to get grilled, bro.
D-Stroy: Yo, Paul, fall back, B. What’s wrong with you, B? That’s a banger though. Illmatic, Nas. Did you ever get another sealed Illmatic?
Eminem: I do have one. A sealed one. It is in my collection. I don’t even touch that motherfucker. I have one that I listen to, and then I have one that’s unopened. Actually, I have two sealed of Illmatic.
D-Stroy: Beautiful. Makes me happy to hear that. Last question right here. You started as a kid with a Walkman, studying everybody you could. Now you’re the person young artists are studying. When did you first realise you had gone from being the student to becoming part of somebody else’s hip hop education?
Eminem: Wow. I think being in the underground scene was definitely a learning experience for me. I don’t know if I had realised that yet, though. When the album dropped, I first started hearing other rappers. I felt like they were trying to sound like me. And I was like, “Wait, what the fuck? They’re trying to sound like me? Probably ’99. After the Slim Shady LP dropped, there were some rappers coming up in the underground. I don’t think I was there yet. Everybody had their own shit and I didn’t realise till the first album dropped that now rappers were starting to sound like me. Pretty fucking wild. Pretty fucking wild, man.
Detroit hip hop scene
D-Stroy: At the time you had a lot of representation for East Coast and West Coast in hip hop. How important was it for you to bring in Detroit’s sound to the whole culture?
Eminem: That definitely was fun. When I first came out, I was just telling my story, being so influenced by other Detroit MC’s – Eye Kyu, Proof. But I don’t know if I was trying to put Detroit on, because Detroit already had rappers with major deals. Awesome Dré. There were a lot of really good Detroit rappers, but it was fun to see the city get worldwide attention. It was an honour for me to be part of that.
D-Stroy: Eminem, thank you so much for your time, for hanging out, for breaking down some wonderful classic albums and projects and discussing a lot of artists that many should know. Anything else you’d like to say before we get out of here and celebrate Labour Day weekend?
Eminem: If we were in the studio, all of us together at the same time, I would break dance for you guys.
And after joking a bit more about Paul Rosenberg’s rap persona, Eminem signed off.
By the end, the interview circles back to the classroom joke that framed the whole special. Eminem may laugh at the idea of being “the teacher”, but that is exactly where the conversation leaves him: still a fan, still a student of the craft, and now one of the artists younger rappers study.
Then the bell rings.
That’s the bell. Class dismissed. I’m Eminem. Thanks for going back to school. Da Ol’ Skool Way with D-Stroy and me.