Eminem’s manager Paul Rosenberg got hooked on his music from the very first release. And wanted to work with him since he heard demos for the Slim Shady EP.
Paul mentioned it during his recent appearance on Shade45. Sway noted that Eminem signed his first record deal in 1998, and Paul reminded that even before that, Marshall had his distinctive voice and ability to put together an impressive album:
“Infinite” came out in 1996. That’s his first independent record. Yeah, that’s been a minute. I wasn’t involved yet, actually. He had done it on his own. I bought “Infinite” from him on cassette for $6. He was selling them hand to hand at the hip hop shop on 7 Mile. It took me by surprise. I was surprised he had it together so much to be able to put out an independent product. You know, back then, it wasn’t so easy to do. You had to really have your stuff together. You had to be able to afford a studio, to hire producers. You couldn’t just record everything at home and press the button on your computer. You had to send it off to a manufacturer and get your cassettes back. It was very different back then. I was impressed by the fact that he had it together, and he had a group of people who knew enough to be able to put this product in his hands. Then I heard it, and I thought it was great. It’s very different from Eminem we are used to now in almost every regard. The way he sounded, his delivery, the subject matter, the types of beats — it was all very different from Eminem that you know today. But one thing that I heard was the talent.
I knew he had that raw ability to rap really, really well. I stayed focused on him and stayed in touch with him after I left Detroit and moved to New York to take bar exams. Then some friends reached out to me, that was actually DJ Head, who was Marshal’s DJ at one time, reached out to me and said, “Hey, you gotta check out the new stuff Em is doing”. That’s when he had the bare bones of what became the Slim Shady EP. It had “Don’t give a fuck” there and records like that. That’s when he found his voice and created Slim Shady and that attitude that gave him the freedom to be who he really is as an artist. And I was like, “Okay, this is something I definitely gonna work with”.
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