Q&A: Producer Jeff Bass on Discovering Young Eminem: 'He Was Sitting on the Toilet, and He Came Up With the Alter Ego'
 |
| Jeff Bass (Credit: 'Jeff Bass Music' facebook page) |
By Amos Barshad on November 6, 2013 4:18 PM ET
You may have never heard of the Bass Brothers. But you've heard the Bass Brothers. Before Jimmy Iovine, before Dr. Dre, it was Michigan's Jeff and Mark Bass who were flipping their shit over the sounds of a young kid from Detroit named Marshall Mathers. In the early days, the production duo's studio on 8 Mile Road was like a second home for Eminem. And it was there that they recorded The Slim Shady EP, which would eventually make its way to Dre and Iovine and land Eminem his record deal. They'd continue to work with Em for years, producing all but three tracks on The Slim Shady LP, some of the more twisted ends of The Marshall Mathers LP, and — drum roll, drum roll, drum roll — "Lose Yourself." With this week's release of The Marshall Mathers LP 2, we got Jeff Bass on the phone to talk about the good old days.
How'd you meet Eminem?
My brother was listening to the radio, what today is our 95.5. It was a DJ we knew named Lisa Lisa. He called and asked her who that was, freestyling. She said, that’s Marshall Mathers. He said, “Is there any way we can get in touch with him?” She gives him the number. My brother called. And at three o’clock in the morning [Eminem] came to the studio, with a bunch of little dudes who turned out to be D12. That’s how it began. We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. He took a leap of faith at three in the morning.
Was he in school then?
He was working. He was flipping hamburgers at a little diner. Kind of a Coney Island. And every chance he got, he was in the studio. After work, before work. Studio.
What'd you make of him at first?
I was always kind of a hip-hop head, because of the R&B roots behind it. But when Marshall came into the picture, I wasn't quite sure about his ability — because I couldn't understand what he was saying! He was triple-timing, spitting rhymes: I was just trying to comprehend him. Then I started writing tracks for him. And it became apparent that he was amazing.
In between Infinite [Eminem's official, independently released first album] and The Slim Shady EP, we figured out how to communicate with him. Because he doesn’t come from a musical background. We had to figure out a way emotionally to get through to him. So how I approached it is, any song that had a happy feel we’d call a happy tune. Angry, sad, violent — we’d use adjectives to get through to him. So that he could write the type of lyrics that’d go with the track.
Most people know Kim as a character. You have a different perspective.
He’s been with me since ‘95, when he was a young buck. I was with him when Hailie was just born. I knew Kim. She used to come into the studio with us all the time. We used to take Marshall out to the different clubs in Detroit. She would come with us, be her crazy self.
