Eminem Interview

[lil_bayly]

host Alen Balen interviewed Eminem for the Backstage show.

Your book, The Way I Am, has just been released. It must have been fun doing the research for it.

Eminem: Oh yeah, I mean it was years of like collecting you know, just collecting memorabilia, whatever, you know, and just saying like, ‘I wonder one day will I use this’. And finally got a chance to use it basically, you know, it was just a bunch of stuff that was stacking up at my house, in my office, like you know, and just it was ‘like wow, I wonder if one day I’ll get the chance to do something with it.’ But this was the perfect thing to do it with I think.

It says in the book that you used to sell clothes that you’d made yourself.-.-press-.-Eminem

Eminem: There’s a flier in there that I actually drew myself, you know, and maybe I think I made copies at the school printer or something like that, and just cut them out myself and would pass them around the neighbourhood, you know. And sometimes I started getting orders and like people wanted like stuff done by me and they started to get like, it was like, ‘wow, I need to calm down’, ‘cos if I had two or three things to do in a week, it would like swamp me, ‘cos I’d have to go up to AL Price at the corner - it was a little drug store – and the little bottles of fabric paint I would steal them, until they put the detectors up or whatever and I couldn’t really do it anymore. But you know they used to be real easy to swipe, but they were like three or four bucks a piece. ou know, so I used to just take those and the Statue of Limitations is up by the way on that. So I can’t get in trouble. No, I mean that’s basically how I would do it, and then I would go back to my house and you know, just paint.
Do you remember when you first got into rap music?

Eminem: Well I remember specifically when I was in the sixth grade, there was this kid, there were these kids, James, Freddy and ……I forget the other guy’s name; three kids who taught me how to break dance. And we used to go into the library. I’m not sure if I wrote it in the book, if I didn’t I’ll say it anyways. There were these three kids who taught me how to break dance, and we used to go after school in the library. And the librarian would let us like throw cardboard down and like, you know, do stuff.

And this dude Freddy was out cold man, he was crazy with it. Well I picked up little moves like that, my Uncle Ronny started teaching me like you know, how to break dance and whatever. And we lived in these apartment complexes and stuff when I was twelve, thirteen. And we used to walk around with cardboard and like put it down in the park and just you know, just walk around with the radio on our shoulders, you know. That whole thing.

Man, it was just, it was fun, it was like a whole, it was like an outlet for me that I never had. You know. ‘Cos I liked, you know, growing up I think, you know, Prince, Michael Jackson. Like stuff like that. But I couldn’t, it wasn’t anything to like identify with and say this is what I want to do. And it was like, it was one of them things too when you were a kid, like, it was yours, you know, and it was like nobody around you really could have it.

If people started catching on, you didn’t like….. like when people caught on to The Fat Boys, I didn’t like them no more. I’m not saying anything bad about the Fat Boys I love the Fat Boys! When Crushing came out, it was like, it wasn’t that it wasn’t a good album, it was that everybody knew who they were, so it was like, ‘Oh I gotta find me some more underground’. And you know, that’s kinda how underground kids do today. That’s the way they want it. If you get you know, it’s the way the game is basically in general.

The Beastie Boys were important to you when you were young weren’t they?

Eminem: When I saw the Beastie Boys I remember I was on, I was sleeping on a couch somewhere, I think I was at one of my mother’s boyfriend’s houses or something at the time, and I seen the video come on TV. And I was like, ‘holy sh..!’ You know what I mean, like, because it wasn’t that they were just white, they were dough. Oh my god! This is like some real shit, you know, Run DMC backing them, basically co signing for them. I mean, that’s what made me think that it could actually be possible I think. You know it can be done.

The rapper Proof, who died a couple of years ago, was a great friend of yours who encouraged you to rap didn’t he?

Eminem: Oh yeah, you know whenever I thought like, if ever, you know, Proof was the kind of person that I would go and play something for and I would get like, immediately get the, basically the criticism that I needed. You know what I mean? He would tell me like if something was whack. He would make fun of me for it. But he wouldn’t do it in a mean way, he would like, we’d joke about it, you know what I mean, ‘cos that’s kinda how our relationship was, but you know, when I did hit something, when I was on to something, he would tell me, and he’d be like really adamant about it, you know what I mean. He would just be like, ‘Yo, people need to hear this’.

Whenever I’d make a demo tape, you know, for years we did this, we swapped demo tapes back and forth and we used to bump each other’s stuff, but he would come over like singing my stuff. Like he never really did it. It took years for him to do that, but then all of a sudden he started doing that, and he was like, he knows what’s going up you know.

And didn’t Proof drag you to your first rap performance?

Eminem: Yeah, well he didn’t like physically drag me, but he told me, he basically said you know, ‘come down here tomorrow.’ He had called me and told me you know, come down here tomorrow, try it out, there’s gonna be this battle going on or whatever. And something was going on down there, I’m not sure if it was, I think it was a battle. And he was telling me, basically like, ‘wait ‘til most of the people clear out, like after the battle. And rhyme, you know, just, you ain’t gotta really battle nobody, just rhyme. And let people hear you rhyme. And if you don’t like it, you ain’t gotta do it again.’ So I’m like ‘alright cool!’. So I ended up calling work and telling them I was gonna be a little late. I was a chef, a short order cook or whatever. You know, I went down there and I got, just from the few people there, it was like, I got this response, it was like, it was crazy. That was like a turning point in my life. That’s when I like really really dug down and got serious with everything. You know, metaphorically, lyrically, paying attention to everything I said, you know, and making sure like everything was a punchline. Because you know, in rap, especially back then, everything was punchlines. You know, metaphors, punchlines, and you were trying to get ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ from whoever was there.

Is it true you got the inspiration for the name Slim Shady sitting on a toilet?

Eminem: This is not a lie. I was sitting on the toilet and I was just, a lot of good material comes out of that, you know. So that was my little moment of solitude there. And this name pops into my head like, you know, I was kinda skinny and I was like, I want maybe it should be something ‘Slim’, you know what I mean? And then just for some reason, Slim Shady popped into my mind and I just thought of 20 things that rhymed with it right off the bat. This is it. I go in my little room and I’m, I went back in the room and I was like, I just kept writing and that’s when I wrote Just Don’t Give A…. And it started out Slim Shady brain dead like Jim Brady. And then it just kinda developed over you know, the next couple of songs or whatever. And then it started, it was kind of an outlet for me to say, to be able to say things that I always wanted to. And once I found that, it was like ok I got it! This is what Proof wants. You know what I mean. And this is like, this is what it should be.

[Arabian Shady]

that sounds fake as fuck.
he's asking question to answers allready in the book
stupid punk

[blitches]

that sounds fake as fuck.
he's asking question to answers allready in the book
stupid punk

its real, i got the audio

[shadygeneral]

I think its fake. Most of this stuff is written word for word in his book.

[Slim Zaddy]

that sounds fake as fuck.
he's asking question to answers allready in the book
stupid punk

its real, i got the audio

common dude , i want the audio .. can you upload it .. nd i will be grateful ..