A new instalment of “Crook’s Corner” brought a deep and thought-provoking conversation with one of the chief cornerstones of hip-hop, who recently appeared on Eminem’s album “Music To Be Murdered By”.
Naturally, Crook wanted Black Thought to talk us through the process of recording this joint, to learn how “Yah Yah” came to life. Black Thought is sure that it was Royce da 5’9” who introduced Marshall to what Tariq is doing:
That was all Royce. It’s been great to have him as a comrade and to be able to bounce ideas off one another. We just got a different sort of mutual respect, high level of respect from one another as artists. So anytime we get together it’s competitive, but it’s competitive in a way that’s gonna bring out the best in artists. If we’re in the studio, or we are on stage or we send this shit back and forth via text. We did a song together for one of those joints called “Rap On Steroids” and when it came out the last maybe bar and a half he had Em saying like two words on that joint. And that had everybody hyped and it was like, “Em gonna do a verse on “Rap On Steroids Remix” and it’s gonna be Black Thought, Em and Royce!” That was something that people were buzzing about but it never came to be. Royce played more than an integral role in this most recent Em album. He was in the studio working with Em and it’s not like Em had never known what was up, it’s not like I was never on his radar as an artist but he had never really dealt with my evolution in the way that he did during this recording process. And I feel that’s because Royce was showing him shit. This the joint that he did with Statik Selektah, this is the joint that he did with Benny the Butcher. He showed him a bunch of features and probably Royce showed Em the material of mine that made Royce appreciate me the most. And then Em was able to see it. And he was like, “Yo, we gotta get him on his record”. You know, of course, we all want to be on a record with Eminem, we all want to be on a record with will Hov. These people are at the top of our field, so that’s the type of exposure that you can’t buy. That was the call like, “Yo, it’s that time”, you gotta get busy. That being said, I wasn’t having my verse. I wasn’t done but my time was up though. But they were like, “It’s done, we gotta mix that shit, everything else is done”. And I was like, “Alright, I guess you can roll with it”. But I was still trying to tweak it, make it as best as I could because I felt like there’s a whole new demographic of people who aren’t familiar with me as an artist but they are familiar with Eminem and that’s gonna be their introduction to what I do. There’s a whole demo of people who you know are from that date can put two and two together and realise that Black Thought from The Roots is Tariq from The Tonight Show.
Watch Black Though discussing his joint with Eminem below:
