Starting with the double-speed flow of “Forgot About Dre”, Eminem kept working on packing as much wordplay and energy in his verse as possible. And he learned how to do it.
One of the most striking examples of Em’s speed is his “Rap God” recorded for “The Marshall Mathers LP2”. The density of the song came as a surprise even to Slim:
When I first recorded it, 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 live. So there is 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.
Video part:
Listen to the episode below:
