Icast 1999

ICAST: What was your life like growing up, and how do you think it
influenced your music?

Eminem: My life was really shitty growing up, and obviously it influenced my music. All you got to do is pick up a Slim Shady album. I feel like if you listen to the album in depth, there is really not many questions to ask.  I'm pretty much coming out and telling the world this is what I been through, this is what I seen, this is what I done.

I feel like I represent hip-hop. I've lived it all my life and I know it, I grew up on it. And I would say my sound is just pretty much for anybody who's been through some bullshit man, who has ever been through some - trifling times or whatever. We pretty much all have, so I represent those people. All I do is reflect what's went on in my life in my music.

ICAST: How old were you when you started rapping?
Eminem: Like nine. I was about nine when I started listening to rap. I started rapping, writing my own ryhmes about fourteen and just kept getting better at it.

Proof: Better and better.

ICAST: What kind of influences do you guys bring to the sound of the music?

Proof: Ice-T. Ice-T, "Reckless" on up.

Eminem: Yeah, Ice-T's "Reckless" was the first rap song I ever heard. I was in the fourth or fifth grade. But growing up, I had a lot of influences like L.L. Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run DMC. Some of the earlier groups.

Proof: NWA, 2 Live Crew.

Eminem: But the list goes on and on. It was Run DMC and 2 Live Crew, then it was NWA, and Run DMC again. Just whoever was putting out albums.

Proof: Basically, we checked everything. No matter if it was wack, we would know because we were bright. Every tape that was out, we bought it. He had a tape collection that was incredible. I had the vinyl and he had all the tapes.

ICAST: What's your writing process like?

Proof: We not gonna say that because what if somebody is watching that and we tell you, we gotta kill you because you'll give away the formula.

Eminem: No, my writing process is basically, I don't try to sit down and think of shit. I let the thoughts pop into my head, and then I write them down. I let it come natural. It's not something that I try to search for.  I gotta let the stuff - throughout the course of my day, I might find like six to twelve ideas. And then just jot them down and at the end of the week or the end of two weeks or whatever, I stack my ideas up and then I write a rhyme.

Proof: If somebody listen to the album, and they listen, most of the stuff he say reflect from his life. He don't try to think creatively, he just take from his life and animate it with lyrics.

ICAST: Does that help you work through some stuff? Some of your songs are
about pretty serious things.
Proof: I think it is a therapy for him. It's a therapy for every rapper.

Eminem: For every rapper out there - hip-hop has always been known to be pretty much autobiographical. You reflect your life - you tell what you know. You say things from your point of view, like this is my point of view, this is the way I see life, it's always been like that.

ICAST: Do you think you material deserves to have like a parental warning on
it?

Proof: Yeah definitely.

Eminem: Definitely, but it's not going to stop kids from getting it. I was 11-12 years old, listening to 2 Live Crew, sneaking into rated R movies.  Kids are kids, and kids are a lot smarter than we really give them credit for.

Proof: That's what it is.

Eminem: People want to try to blame music, like the kids in Colorado and shit like that, people want to try and blame the music for it, but those kids are really crazy.

Proof: To start with. And the parents should be checked for that. They always try to blame - find something else like maybe it's the Slim Shady record because he talking about crazy stuff.

Eminem: It's the music or it's the movie that the kid's seen that made him do it. If they want to see that movie, they the one that did it. Or if they want to listen to that record, they wouldn't of did it. Come on man.

Proof: They don't just take one song and make a person go nuts. That's a growth thing.

Eminem: If I'm a jump off a bridge, I'm a jump off bridge because I want to jump off a bridge, not because somebody told me to.

Proof: Not because Ice-T says he jumped off the bridge. We jump off the bridge cause we gonna jump off the bridge anyway.

Eminem: You want to jump off the bridge with us? Let's all three of us go right now and we'll go jump off a bridge.

Proof: Come on man, everybody is doing it.

Eminem: Everyone is doing it now.

Proof: Everybody is jumping off the bridge, dude. Dude, everyone is jumping off the bridge.

Eminem: Would you come jump off the bridge with us?

ICAST: If I jump off the bridge, I can't listen to your CD anymore.
Eminem: You can listen to my CD on the way down.

ICAST: Did you ever run into resistance?

Eminem: No, no, no.

ICAST: Well, I mean, because you're a white guy.

Proof: Oh God----

Eminem: I'm white!

Proof: He's white! Man, I didn't know you was white! All that time - - get out of here. You telling me this guy is white.

ICAST: As far as I can tell.

Proof: This dude is white? Damn it.

Eminem: No it's sunburn.

Proof: Sunburn. He's red.

ICAST: Do people have expectations, like this guys isn't going to be able to
do it because he's...

Eminem: I don't know - you have to ask those people.

Proof: Listen, I'll tell you this. I went to black dominated high school and I used to sneak him in there into the lunchroom. And they'd be like, "We want to battle you." "No, can't battle me, why don't you battle the white boy over there first?" And everybody would be like "I'll kill him."  Then the Em would come out and kill the whole lunch room, which was a black dominated school and would be looking like "damn!"

Eminem: Everything is always looks. You gonna fuck with somebody --- people are gonna mess with you by looks. Whether you go to a mixed school or you go to an all black school or you go to an all white school, you gonna pick things out to mess with kids about. Growing up, that's just what you do.  This kid's fat. This kid's too skinny. This kid's got buck teeth, this kid's got a big forehead - you know what I'm sayin?

Proof: And this kid looks like Chris Rock. We've been through all that.

ICAST: Do you think it made you work harder to get respect as a rapper?
Eminem: Definitely. I had to work hard and there was a certain level of respect I had to get. It was definitely an uphill battle, but I feel like I'm winning it. I'm slowly winning over the respect of everybody. I don't care if you black, white, orange or whatever colour you are, that kid can skateboard, that kid can ride a bike, that kid can rap, that dude can play football.

Proof: It don't really matter. I think that the youth that's coming up now is really dope. Whoever they cool with, they cool with personality.

ICAST: How did you hook up with Dr. Dre?

Eminem: I was just in a lot of rap competitions and I was in the '97
Scribble Jam, and then towards the end of '97, I was in the Rap Olympics.  And taking second place in the Rap Olympics, kids from Interscope were there and they got the tape, my demo tape so to speak, and I gave it to him and Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope, he liked it and he played it for Dre, and Dre was like, "Yo, let's find this kid, let's hook him up or whatever."  And they found me.

ICAST: What was it like to work with him?
Proof: That's the greatest producer in rap history. The greatest man.

Eminem: Dre is the best. The best producer of all time.

Proof: No doubt.

Eminem: That's a question that is always asked and it's kind of self-explanatory, like what am I supposed to say?



ICAST: I mean, how does he communicate his ideas and how does he get your ideas in a way that someone else wouldn't be able to? Because he obviously succeeds.

Eminem: Their chemistry.

Proof: Because there is a chemistry there.

Eminem: Yeah, like when him and Snoop Dogg first got together. There's a chemistry there. It's like this - I'm a lyricist and a writer. He makes beats and produces it. He has a vision. He can make that come to life.  Every Dre beat - damn near every Dre beat that I hear, I wanna rap over. It makes me instantly think of things, so like I said, it's just a chemistry.  We just get together and in one studio session, we can knock out one or two songs right there.

ICAST: Where do you think rap is headed?
Eminem: Rap and hip-hop if the biggest thing, you know what I'm saying?

Proof: It's embracing the youth, so - there's always babies every minute.

Eminem: I think rap embraces the youth, so as long as there's always youth, there's always rap.

ICAST: What's your relationship with a live audience like?
Eminem: The reaction has been good so far. Especially with the Warped Tour. It's a different crowd for me to perform in front of so everything has been on the up and up. The crowds are perceiving me well, so I'm cool with it. I like to work for my money. I like to go out and earn crowds because it makes me feel like I'm working. Not just come out on stage and stand in one spot and the crowd just loves me the whole time just because of who I am. I want to give a show. I want to entertain people. I want to be in touch with the crowd and talk to people, keep eye contact with the people.  And really just try to see what they're feeling. These are the people that's buying my records, so they're paying my way. So, you gotta keep in touch with them fans.

ICAST: So the audience can affect your performance?

Proof: Definitely. Because we not the kind of MC's that go on stage and don't care what they do. We feed off the crowd every time. Every show.

Eminem: If the crowd is not making no noise, I'm going to address it.  Whatever the crowd is doing, I'm going to address it. If they ain't making no noise, I'm going to stop my record --- "yo, you ain't feeling me or whatever?" If they throwing shit, and acting rowdy, I'ma address it.

Proof: If they're not hype, we work harder sometimes. Jump in the crowd, whatever we gotta do.

Eminem: Jump in the crowd, take our clothes off,

Proof: Beat up their pets.

ICAST: You mentioned that the Warped Tour audience is different than your normal audience, how is it different?

Eminem: It's different because ever since January I been on tour --- pretty much non-stop, and every tour that I done so far has been pretty much strictly hip-hop crowds. And this is like you got alternative, you got Blink 182 to Ice-T. You got people that come to see me, you got people that come to see Suicidal Tendencies. So it's just all types of crowds. When I look into the crowd and I'm saying my words, and the front row might not know it, but the people in the back might not know the words to my songs because they ain't heard my album yet or they barely know who Eminem is. So I'm trying to get the respect of them people.

Proof: We want to work them.

ICAST: What do you think is the biggest risk that you've had to take for your career?

Eminem: Drugs.

Proof: No, I think his biggest risk was the sacrifice into his family time.

Eminem: My family I don't get to see. My girl and my daughter. I don't get to see them. And one of the main things that's really fucked up is when people piss you off, you can't hit them in the face.

Proof: We can't do nothing no more because the way it used to be, we was the
bully busters.

Eminem: We can't act like how we wanna act. How we really wanna act.

Proof: Cause the higher powers that be won't allow it. We can't even look at nobody no more.

Eminem: Judge Judy.

Proof: We can't argue, we can't do nothing. We gotta - it's just crazy man.

ICAST: How do you do that?

Proof: It's hard.

Eminem: I got out of control a couple of times.

Proof: He can't live with it. I think I can, but I don't think he can live with it.

Eminem: It's really hard, man. When somebody disrespects you on a street level, you want to do something to retaliate. But you got to learn to control your temper and you got to take the "Fuck you's" and "You suck!" and shit like that.

Proof: Even the flapping you. Or whatever they do to you.

Eminem: Somebody slaps me, and ----

Proof: We was lying right there on that part. If you hit us, we gonna hit you back. Believe me.

ICAST: Sounds like you've been able to direct your own career a lot of the time. So how do you define success?

Proof: That's funny, that's a funny word, success, cause success is like when you succeeded. What have we succeeded?

Eminem: I'm cool with success as long as it doesn't get too out of hand.  I'm trying to keep shit balanced and ---

Proof: Down to earth.

Eminem: And what people don't realise is that you're a regular person. When I go out on that stage --- if I'm on stage and my voice cracks or I'm losing my voice because I've been on tour for so long --- if I slip and fall down and trip over a cord, whatever happens. People don't realise that whatever happens, happens. And you're just a human being. And when you don't want to sign million autographs when you're standing outside of your bus and you sign a few of them, and then them other people that didn't get their autographs are like "fuck you, asshole!" People don't realise you're a regular person, a human being. And that's one of the hardest things that people have trouble coming to grips with.

Proof: That you're regular. That you bleed and use the bathroom.

ICAST: So what do you do when you have your down time? How do you keep your head together?

Proof: Down time? What the fuck is that?

Eminem: We had like two weeks off.

Proof: We had 13 days off.

Eminem: I masturbate a lot. I masturbate a lot.

Proof: But masturbation is cool.

ICAST: The ultimate in safe sex.

Proof: Ultimate safe sex. Especially if you wear a condom.

Eminem: Use condoms. Don't do drugs. Leave it up to me.

ICAST: What is the most important thing you've learned since you've gotten a real level of commercial success that you might not have had earlier in your career?

Proof: I don't know man, I gotta lot of shit to learn still. Everyday I learn something new. Everyday I meet somebody new, so maybe as me in 20 years.

Eminem: My main thing was, I wanted to get the respect, I wanted to show the world and people who didn't believe in me that I could do this. And now that I'm doing it, I'm proving my point. And I'm going to keep proving my point until I'm tired of the rap music. I can't do it forever. None of us can. You can't ask questions forever. You probably got about 87 more questions on there, so --- you can apparently ask questions forever. I can't rap forever.