Before the hit records, Grammy nods, and infamous $100 million rollercoaster, Scott Storch was a broke keyboardist from Philly who played his way into hip hop history.
Scott Storch has built beats for everyone from Beyoncé and 50 Cent to Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake. But long before the platinum plaques and Grammy nominations, he was flat broke, three months behind on rent, and brand new to LA.
In a new interview with Patrick Bet-David, the hitmaker opens up about the moment everything changed: meeting Dr. Dre and, later, Eminem.
His break came thanks to a chance encounter with Eve (yes, that Eve, the only third female rapper in history to peak atop the Billboard 200), who recognised him from Philly and offered to connect him with Dre. “She kept her word”, said Scott. “I waited in the lobby for four hours. Then they said, ‘Dre’s waiting for you in the live room.’ I had no music to play for him”.
But Dre had heard Scott was good on keys and gave him a shot. “I just thought, I’m not going to play anything I ever played before. I’m going to do the most ominous gangster type shit that I can think of. Not the P-Funk shit that the West Coast was doing at that time. I wanted to do something because I know Dre is into that type of stuff”. A few minutes later, Dre was sold. Storch walked out with a key to a boutique hotel and $10,000 in cash. “All my problems were solved”, he remebers.
The very next day, Dre brought him into the studio again. “He said, ‘I got this white rapper kid. He’s really dope. His name is Marshall’. And we made “Just The Two Of Us” that day, his first release on Aftermath”.
Storch vividly recalls that first impression: “He had black hair. He was chubby. And he didn’t look nothing like… He was a beast. Eminem’s a funny dude. Super cool. He got a lot more serious over the years, but he’s just a funny dude. Ate Taco Bell every day. Literally, every day. He used to come to my house and make beats with me”.
One memory still makes Scott laugh: “The album was done, but Em was adding sound effects: gunshots, glass breaking, whatever. Dre walked in like, ‘Yo, enough of them motherfucking sound effects, it’s done!’”. Scott chuckles, but that funny story does not take away from his respect to Em’s talent as a producer: “He’s like a mad scientist. He’s not just a rapper. He’s producing the albums. He’s bringing the magic out of it”.
That early partnership between Dre, Eminem, and Storch played a crucial role in shaping the gritty, experimental sound that launched Eminem’s career. Storch helped craft the atmosphere that defined those formative albums. His keys echoed through the beats that introduced the world to Slim Shady, marking the beginning of one of hip hop’s brightest eras.
