The lyric sheet thread

[Amaranthine]

YES! I love reading through those. So glad you made this thread.

I've always wanted to know what he was going to do with the "stock market crashed Wall Street NASDAQ stock exchange Dow Jones" thing. That's definitely not something you expect Em to rap about.

[RainMan44]

I find a few of Eminem's lyric sheets in his book "The Way I Am" very interesting, as it's a nice window into his mind. I thought I'd just make this thread for anyone who wants to comment on some of the thoughts/ideas he was having that never made it into songs.

"The more you take it literally/the more I say it deliberately." You can tell this was a line written for MMLP. He was probably unhappy with the syllables not lining up.

"Anaesthesia/have a seizure." Sounds like this was part of a story set in a hospital.

"South Park episode/LFO." He must have decided against mentioning LFO directly in Marshall Mathers, and just parodied their lyrics.

"Still the same as I was before My Name Is blew up/If anything I grew up and you just hated it too much."

That guy you just heard on tape is dead
He shot himself and blew off the whole top of his head
That was my uncle Ronnie I grew up with from the cradle
We thought he was crazy but never thought he'd do something fatal

Wish we got to hear this Ronnie song. I like the overlapping rhymes here...grew up with/do something. From the cradle/something fatal.

I was also fascinated by the Ronnie lyrics. I always wondered how a 2000 Em would flow that shit, and more importantly, 1) the content would have been the most personal of his career probably along with Difficult, and 2) the delivery prime Em had back then vocally would have murdered the track (i.e Kim)



Good thread.

[Arrinef]

that whole book is magical, never seizes to amaze me

[Amaranthine]

The stuff about Hailie kinda makes me sad, too. Like how he hopes one day she'll be proud of him and she doesn't understand what it took to get where he is. Hope that has changed.

[CrashBand]

"The more you take it literally/the more I say it deliberately." You can tell this was a line written for MMLP. He was probably unhappy with the syllables not lining up.

That could've been such an awesome line in Who Knew or Criminal.

Such a pity he didn't find a way for it to work.

[Erowid]

The stuff about Hailie kinda makes me sad, too. Like how he hopes one day she'll be proud of him and she doesn't understand what it took to get where he is. Hope that has changed.

Mind quoting specifics? I wish I owned that book, but I don't.

Yeah I know what you mean, but I would imagine it has changed (Hailie's understanding of the situation, I mean). She was just a little kid back then, so she couldn't have been expected to have that sort of perspective (but I think it was obvious that she loved him intrinsically, the way little girls are obsessed with their dads). These days, I would guess that she takes her lifestyle for granted to a point (we all do), but that she is grateful.... well, I wouldn't say grateful, because as his daughter, she is basically entitled to share in his lifestyle, and she probably realizes that, too. But I'm guessing she respects him and admires him for his accomplishments.

I just thought of something: remember back when Kim was doing her smear campaign in 2007, and Mojo asked her what words would Hailie use to describe her dad, and she offered, "talented" and "weird" (lol). Obviously, Kim's focus was on the "weird" part, and on how the kids are so confused, etc, but that she would call him talented (or that Kim would imagine that she would call him talented, anyway), said a lot to me. It suggested (to me at least) that she has a conception of him in terms of his career and his legacy, and that she thinks of him as making a valuable contribution to the world... not just as a walking atm, whose job description she is unclear about. Even then, she was clearly aware that they were rich because of him and that he must be something special. (does that make sense? lol)

Honestly though, I've had to learn the same lesson about my OWN parents. They're obviously nowhere near as successful as Em, but they are educated professionals, who struggled to get to where they are, and I'm just now (at 25) starting to REALLY grasp their effort and their sacrifices. So it's a gradual process, I think.

Just my thoughts...

[Atone]

"The more you take it literally/the more I say it deliberately." You can tell this was a line written for MMLP. He was probably unhappy with the syllables not lining up.

That could've been such an awesome line in Who Knew or Criminal.

Such a pity he didn't find a way for it to work.

The more you take it literally / the more I say it deliberately
i'll make you hate to live with me/ i'll make you sick of me
you'll want to take me psychically/ emotionally you'll take your hits at me
but i'll make you bitches see you aint equipt to be
able to sit with me, so you'll wanna pull a trigger to get rid of me

[EminemBase]

"I'ma go broke, my luck ain't good enough to stay rich." This subject was really playing on his mind in the MMLP era.

"i'm a son of a bitch. For real, my mother's a bitch."

Also interesting to discover that some jokes Eminem uses in interviews were originally on his lyric sheets: "The clean version of my album is gonna sound like this: [silence]"

I'm surprised he wrote those... see those are kind of corny to me. But, it's surprising how... the execution, style and delivery matter so much as on paper; even some of Em's vintage stuff looks kinda stupid or not that impressive, but then when he did it how he did it, it became genius.

[EminemBase]

Yeah I like the 'clean' one, I saw him do that in an interview, I think it would have been good on record.

[CrashBand]

Yeah, I don't like the "mother's a bitch" line either. Since we never heard him say it, don't think he was all too fond either.

I like that "clean version" joke though.

I could imagine SSLP spitting the mother's a bitch line and it being awesome.

"The more you take it literally/the more I say it deliberately." You can tell this was a line written for MMLP. He was probably unhappy with the syllables not lining up.

That could've been such an awesome line in Who Knew or Criminal.

Such a pity he didn't find a way for it to work.

The more you take it literally / the more I say it deliberately

You didn't change it big man.

[EminemInsider]

The Saudi Arabian scumbag supposedly has the Uncle Ronnie song. Of course, he'll never leak it...that would actually make Eminem look better if he released something he made during his prime, as opposed to unreleased pill era shit.

[UofLCard]

Good thread.

"The more you take it literally/the more I say it deliberately.

I like that. Too bad he never used it.

I wish we had went ahead and released the Ronnie song; it could potentially have been great.

[Blu]

Yeah, I don't like the "mother's a bitch" line either. Since we never heard him say it, don't think he was all too fond either.

I like that "clean version" joke though.

I could imagine SSLP spitting the mother's a bitch line and it being awesome.

I could imagine that line on a song like "I'm Shady" or "Brain Damage".

Man, I'm starting to think whether or not Em has been writing...maybe he just recycles his old lines, maybe these are all just Prime Em lines we're hearing him spit, but because of his current image and charisma, it just doesn't have the same delivery.

[CrashBand]

Yeah, I don't like the "mother's a bitch" line either. Since we never heard him say it, don't think he was all too fond either.

I like that "clean version" joke though.

I could imagine SSLP spitting the mother's a bitch line and it being awesome.

I could imagine that line on a song like "I'm Shady" or "Brain Damage".

Man, I'm starting to think whether or not Em has been writing...maybe he just recycles his old lines, maybe these are all just Prime Em lines we're hearing him spit, but because of his current image and charisma, it just doesn't have the same delivery.

That's not a bad theory.

Of course he is writing but there may be many recycled lines that we are viewing as terrible now.

[Amaranthine]

It's not like it's a secret that he recycles lines.