The first Eminem’s completely digital drop ranges from action figures to 3D renders to a custom-made video. NFTs will be on sale for minutes only, the most expensive item will be auctioned for charity.
Paul Rosenberg gave a lecture on new technologies to Sway Galloway and his listeners on Sway 45. The other day Eminem said on Discord that he had not heard about NFT until “Rosenberg brought me the idea and broke out the hand puppet to explain it”. Probably their conversation was very similar to what Rosenberg said on air, sans the hand puppet:
A non-fungible token is a digital token that is attached to something called Blockchain. And Blockchain is a digital ledger that spans across the world, kind of like the Internet, with servers all over the place. And once something is attached to Blockchain with a certain code, it’s sort of locked in place. It can’t be duplicated, it can’t be replicated. The difference between NFT and cryptocurrency is that NFT means a non-fungible token. When something is fungible, it means that one item is the same as the next. Every penny is pretty much the same as the next penny, they’re all worth one cent. Pennies are pennies, right? But at NFT, one item is not the same as the other, they all have a different code. They cannot be interchanged. When you take those things that can’t be interchanged and attached things to them, like artwork or imagery or audio or video, then you have an NFT that represents whatever that piece of media that you attached to it is. That’s the concept. When you talk about trading and buying them, you are not actually trading the asset that attached to the NFT or buying the asset that attached to the NFT, you are buying or trading the token itself. If you spend money buying the token, you get it either on the platform, like Nifty Getaway has its own platform, and after you buy it, you can sell it, you can trade it, or you can keep it and see if it goes up in value. These tokens are going to be attached to whatever the artist that is represented, in this case, Eminem, whatever they decide to attach to this token.
When we came up as kids playing video games, we didn’t have the same things they do now, which are these in-app purchases. People get virtual goods. You see people playing Fortnite. When they play Fortnite, they buy skins to be in the game, to play a character. Like, “I wanna buy a skin to be Iron Man in Fortnite”. They are okay with the concept of paying for something that digital within the app or within the game. And they own it just in that virtual space.
This is broader. You are paying for something, you own it the virtual space, but throughout the entire Internet or metaverse, you own this thing. You don’t have any physical control over it or physical possession of it. But you have it in the sense that it is in your digital life. These are collections for people in their digital life. That’s the best way I can describe it.
You know, when you buy a print of an artwork, the artist makes a painting, makes the prints of that painting. They are actual originals, but they are copies of that original. You buy the print, and you hang it on your wall. This is similar to that, except that’s a digital print. So whatever piece of art it is, you’re buying a digital print of it. You don’t have physical possession, but you have digital possession. And it can’t be copied, it can’t be replicated because it’s attached to that specific sequence on Blockchain. It’s authentic, it’s numbered.
Now for actual detail about Eminem NFT drop on Sunday, April 25, on Nifty Gateway:
It starts at 6.30 pm EST. There are few different drops, and we haven’t released all of the details of them yet. But there is gonna be an open edition, which means that for a set period of time, I think it’s gonna be for 10 minutes, you can buy as many of that particular NFT as you want. That’s an open edition, it means as many people buy that particular NFT during that time period — they will mint as many as are purchased. Then it’s gonna be limited items that for a set period of time you can buy, but once they’re gone — they’re gone. There is a limited amount, and those can be purchased for that period of time. Then there is going to be also one of one that is going to be auctioned. And the sky is the limit for what that’s gonna reach. And we’re gonna give that particular item for the Marshall Mathers foundation as well. It’s going to be a charitable component to this.
Eminem was not involved directly in creating the visual part of this drop. However, he and his art was an inspiration, explains Paul Rosenberg:
We worked hard trying to create something that would really speak to Marshall and who he is and his persona as an artist. If Marshall would have put out some sort of abstract painting, people be like, “What the hell is that?!”. So we came up with this concept called Shady Con. That’s like people in the real world go to these conventions, like, ComicCon or StarTrek Con. Whatever sort of things people are fans of or have hobbies around it, they gather together to trade their collectables. So we created a digital version of that, this is called Shady Con. The inspiration for actual NFTs that are available is Marshall’s interest in what he personally collects. He’s a comic book fan, dare I say, a comic book geek, and he’s been collecting comic books since he was a kid. But he also collects vintage toys, and he obviously is a producer and makes beats. So we tight that all together for the drop. The open edition is these action figures — Slim Shady, Eminem and Marshall Mathers figures. But we also have, and I guess this will be exclusive, one of the numbered sets. We’re calling it a “Pack”. Trading cards. There is gonna be a set of six trading cards that are available in a numbered limited quality. Then beyond the packs, we have Tubes. Limited editions, which are statuettes, sort of 3D art renderings, and they have an original beat produced by Marshall for this drop attached to them. And those are in a limited quantity. Then the one-of-one is going to be a custom-created video. The separate beat is attached to this NFT only. And there will be giveaways with that too that we will announce probably later.
Listen below:
