It is hard to imagine a world where Eminem was not a household name. Still, his journey to stardom could have turned out very differently if not for a series of lucky breaks, a determined A&R, and a tape that almost did not land in the right hands.
In a recent episode of the Behind The Wall podcast, Evan “Kidd” Bogart, the man who helped bring Eminem to Interscope, shared the incredible story of how it all went down. Back in the late ’90s, Bogart was an 18-year-old A&R newbie who had just been promoted from the mailroom. While working on Tupac’s first posthumous album, he got a call from a friend DJing at the Rap Olympics in Inglewood. That call would change everything.
I went down to this freestyle contest in Inglewood, walked in and proceeded to watch Eminem in this freestyle battle. It was the Rap Sheet Rap Olympics, and he was competing in it. I called my friend, who I was in a rap group with, Aristotle, to come down there I was. Like, yo, you got to come down here and see this shit. Then I called my other best friend, who I had just hired, to replace me in the mail room when I got promoted to A&R floater, this kid Dean Geislinger. These were my two best friends, and I called them to come down there to the freestyle contest, and they showed up a couple of hours later. It was the semi-finals, and Em was saying crazy things like, “Don’t make my facial tissue a racial issue”, all this crazy shit that was mindblowing. He lost in the finals. He went against a rapper named Otherwize from a local rap group called Project Blowed. In his first round, he came out, and they played this KrsOne song, “I’m Still No. 1”, and he did this shout-out the verse. It was a weird thing to pull in the finals of a freestyle battle. He ended up losing in the finals, and he probably would have lost anyway for a few reasons. Rap Sheet was the first black-owned the only black-owned rap magazine at the time. And he was a white rapper, which was not a thing at that moment, coming off of the Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark years. One of the other judges was Juice, Eminem’s rival in all these freestyle battle contests. The winner of the contest then goes and battles the winner of last year who was Juice. So, Juice didn’t want to see Em because they had just gone to triple overtime at Scribble Jam in Chicago right before that. So, he didn’t want to see Em because he didn’t want to be staged up by Em. He knew Em could beat him. For a myriad of reasons, Em lost.
Even though Eminem lost in the finals, Bogart knew he had just witnessed something special.
He introduced himself to Em and walked away with a cassette of the Slim Shady EP.
Em was pacing backstage, mumbling under his breath, angry, teared up a little bit. I went up to him, and I was like, “Hey, I work at Interscope; I do A&R”. He introduced me to his manager at the time, Mark Kemp. Paul was there, too, but Paul was Em’s lawyer; he wasn’t his manager. Mark Kemp gave me the “Slim Shady EP” sampler cassette. I drove home with Aristotle and Dean and popped the cassette into my car. We literally drove home with our fucking jaws on the ground. I had never heard anything like it in my whole life.
Bogart was convinced Eminem was destined for greatness, but convincing the people at Interscope? Not so easy. For months, every A&R passed on the opportunity, ignoring or ridiculing Bogart’s enthusiasm. But Bogart did not give up. He plastered Eminem’s Unsigned Hype feature from The Source all over the A&R department, trying to get anyone to listen.
As rumours swirled that Loud Records was about to sign Eminem, Bogart made a desperate last attempt to draw the high-ups’ attention to a new talent. He forced a cassette into Jimmy Iovine’s bag.
I got a phone call: “Em’s coming into town. Can you get him a meeting at Interscope?” I said I’ll see what I can do. He said, “We’re going to you, guys. We’re going to be at the radio station; listen to us at the radio. We’ll be on Power 106 on Friday night, and then we’re going up to the Wake Up Show on Saturday night”. I went to Tom Wally’s office and tried to get them to take a meeting, and I was basically told no. In a last effort, I took the cassette and went to Jimmy’s office. Jimmy and Tom weren’t super tight. I had no idea at the time; I was too young to understand this, but in retrospect, I was told that Tom and Jimmy had a little bit of a power struggle. You were either Tom’s guy or you were Jimmy’s guy. I was one of Tom’s guys. But I went over to Jimmy’s office, and when I walked in there, my best friend Dean was sitting at the assistant desk. Because Jimmy’s first assistant, a guy named Evan Strauss, was on his honeymoon. So, Jimmy’s second assistant was sitting in as the first assistant. For the second assistant, they pulled a kid out of the mail room.
I was like, “Yo, Dean, put this tape in Jimmy’s bag”. And he’s like, no, no, no, I’m going to get in trouble. I was like, “Dude, come on! Just do it! If anybody says anything, you say it was me. Just put it in his bag”. Jimmy had a satchel that he would take home every weekend, and A&R guys would come in there and drop cassette demo tapes they wanted Jimmy to listen to. They would put it in there, and he would take it home, and he’d listen to it whenever he would listen to it. I basically forced the tape into the bag, and I told Dean, “If they say anything, you can blame it on me”. It was a last-ditch effort at this point because I knew if this didn’t happen, Eminem was going to sign with Loud Records, I knew it.
It was a risky move, but it worked.
By Saturday morning, Bogart got the call: Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine had heard the tape and wanted a meeting with Eminem. Two days later, that meeting led to the deal that would launch Eminem’s career with Interscope and Dr. Dre by his side.
And while there was a bit of confusion later on about who brought Eminem to Interscope — Bogart’s friend Dean tried to take credit for it — the rest is history. Eminem went from freestyling at the Rap Olympics to becoming one of the most successful rappers of all time, thanks to one determined A&R who would not take “no” for an answer.
Watch the video below:
