Wendy Day worked hard to get Eminem a deal. But there were also rappers around who were impressed with him enough to ensure her support for Slim.
Not that long ago, DJ Juice told a story about passing Wendy Marshall’s demo. No Wendy focuses on another aspect of the same tale, where another up and coming rapper advocates for Eminem and even highlights difficulties white folk face in the rap world. Wendy described to
Hip Hop XXIV how she had met Eminem for the first time on his home turf:
He was rapping outside of a hotel. I was there, in Detroit, to speak on a panel inside the Athenium hotel. And I had a rapper with me called Rhymefest. Rhymefest wrote “Jesus Walks” for Kanye to give you some point of reference. When we got to the Athenium hotel, Rhymefest stayed outside to rap, I went inside, spoke on a panel and by the time I got out, hours had passed, and we hadn’t eaten yet, I was starving. I just wanted to go to Denny’s. I hopped in the car, and Rhymefest left the cypher and hopped in the car. He handed me Eminem’s demo and said: “You should listen to this. He can really rap”. I wasn’t focused on music, I really just wanted to get something to eat. You know, when you’re driving and the person in the passenger seat is staring at you? He did the full turn to look at me. I felt his eyes burning through my head. I was like, “What?!” And he said, “You know, that’s really messed up. You know how hard it is being a white in the music industry, and you’re not even listening to his demo. That’s really fucked up”. And I agreed, I popped it in, and it was amazing.
I made a U-turn, went back to the hotel, told Em to get in, and we all drove to Denny’s together. I sat there for hours just talking to him and Rhymefest, explaining what publishing is and how to get a record deal. Just sharing as much knowledge as I had at that time with both of them so they’d be a little bit prepared for the music industry.
Once I got back to New York, I had just done the deal for Twista at Atlantic records, and I had just helped Do Or Die put out their music independently. I had the attention of all of the record labels at that point in time, so I shopped Eminem’s demo. But nobody wanted to sign a white rapper, they admitted that he was talented, but there was a fear that a white rapper wouldn’t sell back in ’96 or ’97. There was still a fear that a white rapper would not do well. I ended up doing an event called Rap Olympics. Which was a battle, for lack of a better explanation, but it was teams battling instead of one-on-one battling. Eminem was on my team. My team didn’t win, Jay Smooth’s team won (Project Blow, they’re amazing!). My team was able to go to the Wake-Up show, which is Sway and Tech. Dr. Dre heard him rapping on the Wake-Up show and went up to the station to see who this amazing lyricist was, and it was Eminem.
Wendy says that the strongest suit that made her believe in Eminem is his unique lyricism. That’s what she saw in him:
His lyrical ability. He had the ability to rap and rhyme three and four syllables, and that was just amazing. You know, most rappers could do one or two, but he was rhyming three or four syllables at that time, and the lyrics made sense.
