XXL 2014

Jimmy Iovine, Dr.Dre and Eminem on the cover of XXL mag, March 2014

This month’s issue of XXL celebrates Beats Electronics with the first ever magazine cover featuring Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine and Eminem

The magazine is on stands nationally on March 11.

Photo Credit:  XXLMAG.COM

XXL 2006 , on Proof & Em

Proof 

Stay Tru

By XXL Staff

R.I.P MC Proof.  Photo credit: XXL website

For more than a decade, up until his shooting death on April 11, Deshaun Dupree “Proof” Holton was a leading figure on the Detroit rap scene. In the mid-’90s, as host and frequent participant at the famed open-mic night at Maurice Malone’s Hip-Hop Shop, Proof carved out a legacy as an unparalleled battle MC, and—as depicted by Mekhi Phifer in the 2002 movie 8 Mile—played an instrumental role in pushing his friend and rhyme partner Eminem to worldwide superstardom.

Proof was born in Detroit on Oct. 2, 1973, the son of record producer McKinley Jackson. He attended various Catholic schools as a child, and went on to Osborn High in his teens, but dropped out to pursue a career in rap before graduating. He formed a duo, Funky Cowboy, in 1996 with producer J Dilla—who also died earlier this year—and later, the multiplatinum sextet D12. While Phifer’s 8 Mile character, Future, was based on Proof’s real-life persona, Proof himself appeared in the movie as Lil’ Tic—the MC who intimidates Eminem’s B-Rabbit into choking in the opening battle scene.

Always one of Motor City’s most approachable stars, Proof could regularly be found at clubs, restaurants, concerts and bowling alleys, and he continued in his support of local hip-hop. Last summer, he launched his own label, Iron Fist Records, with his solo debut, Searching for Jerry Garcia, and planned on releasing the work of his artists Purple Gang, Woof Pak and Supa MC.

A few weeks before his death, Proof sat at the Iron Fist offices in the Michigan Building, about two blocks from the Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit. He was in a good mood, happy with the 50,000 copies Searching for Jerry Garcia had sold, planning an overseas tour with Kid Rock’s DJ, Paradime, and looking forward to starting work on the next D12 album. Shrugging off recent talk of problems within the group, he was quick to defend Eminem against attack, and recounted a recent run-in with one of his camp’s biggest detractors. He also touched on the strange highway shooting of his label mate Obie Trice, his new album, his position in the Motown hip-hop scene and a life that seemed nowhere near finished.

You’ve always stood by your friendship with Eminem. Over the last couple years, he’s taken a lot of heat from certain figures in the industry. In an interview with XXL, Suge Knight tore into him with some pretty venomous statements. He called Em a “racist,” and basically compared him to a slave master.

Well, I had the privilege of meeting Suge Knight. I’m from Detroit, and I guess I don’t understand the fear that some people strike in others. I mean, Suge is doing bad, everybody knows it. The industry banned him. I personally think he shot himself. That’s just me. I mean, what he says don’t even count. When he’s running the record label as a Black man and somebody’s White running a record label, and it’s all the same shit across the board, where’s the slave-master mentality? That makes Suge a slave master if that’s the case. He has a platform to speak from, but most of the things he be saying is bullshit.

Why do you think it’s so popular to rip Em?

High profile! Like I had told Em one time about Suge, if you shut up saying stuff about him, that makes him stronger. If you attack him, you take away the only credibility that he’s got. And that is, the streets believe he’s just some hard-assed muthafucka. But if you approach it like, Yo, he’s not! Like Snoop did on that song “Pimp’d Slapp’d 2 (Fuck Suge Knight),” that shit is hard. ’Cause they’re ain’t nobody saying nothing to Suge. Em had a couple of things they wouldn’t let him say. You know, the labels and shit. If Suge really looks at himself, he destroyed himself. I mean, you had Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac. You got all these big artists, and you’re going to let the streets dictate how to run a record label? It’s like, Okay…

I’ve always been in the hood. But just ’cause I got love for rapping and people in general, I don’t give a fuck what color nobody is. A person’s a person. That’s just the way I operate. I’ll get the “Uncle Toms” and all this kind of shit… But me and Em will be dawgs forever. There’s no doubt. There’s nothing that anyone can say to me about Eminem at all. It’s like, just stop it, okay?

You said you met Suge. This was last year, right? You were in Vegas with Trick Trick? What went down that day?

Well, I was upstairs, and they said that Suge was downstairs. So I was like, I’m going downstairs! He’s with like two or three big dudes. When I came down there, Trick was already there, and he said he told Suge he’s gonna have to see me or something to that effect. I’m like, I don’t want to talk to that nigga. Then I was just chillin’ with some friends, and one of the dudes that was with Suge said something to me. I was like, I ain’t messing with that shit. It wasn’t nothing. So then Kid Rock was downstairs. I love Kid Rock to death. Me and Bob go way back, and this night he decides to be the peacemaker. So when I see Suge next to Kid Rock, I wanted to post up just to make sure that Suge wasn’t trying no crazy shit, you know. But he wasn’t. I guess they knew each other. Then Kid Rock says to Suge, “Hey, that’s my childhood friend. Proof! Come here! Come here!” I’m like, man, that’s fuckin’ Suge Knight. I’m not about to come talk to him. But I walk over there, and Suge sticks out his hand. And I’m like, “I ain’t shakin’ your muthafuckin’ hand. Get out of my face with that shit.” He pointed like, “You, you, and you come outside.” I said, “Man, that’s the last thing you told Tupac, and we ain’t seen him since.” Once I did that, the way his face looked was priceless. I don’t try to tell that story too much, ’cause I’m not trying to be that kind of person. But I know the kind of people I’ve been around all my life. Most of the certain ones, I can put them in the same category, ’cause of this look that they’ve got. When I looked at Suge and that shit wasn’t nowhere there, I was like, I can’t believe it. It was almost like a letdown. It was like, This ain’t the guy. This guy can’t be one of them guys. I’m not even one of those guys, but I know them guys, and he’s not one of them dudes.

When you’re in other cities, do you feel like you have to represent Detroit in a certain way—let others know that you don’t take any shit?

If you can survive in Detroit, I’ll be damned if I’ll go anywhere and be hoed out. ’Cause this place is a muthafucka. They say there’s like two or three murders a day in Detroit. They don’t even make the news, that’s how much murder happens here.

Just like all that beefin’ with Suge, I ran into Chris Gotti the other day at the Compuware thing. Kind of the same thing Suge tried to do to me. I know the owner of the Compuware building and his wife, so I wasn’t about to tear up no shit. You know they tried to rush me down in Miami. Which they didn’t do anything. I’m like 165 pounds and five or six of y’all can’t get me. They was all just DJs and kittens. [Laughs.] I walked out with scratches.

Obie Trice was shot this past New Year’s Eve while driving down the freeway. Do you think there was any connection to rap, or was it just an unlucky, wrong-place, wrong-time kind of thing?

I think it’s a Detroit thing, honestly. I was at a show in Toledo when that happened. I drove all the way back thinking the worst shit ever. But it was a good thing the bullet didn’t really penetrate. I’m glad he’s hardheaded. People don’t know that Obie is actually my cousin. But we didn’t find that out ’til later, after being label mates. That’s some wild shit!

You’re known for being out on the scene here in Detroit, and for being approachable, down-to-earth. Has that become more difficult lately?

A lot of times when I’m out and about, I get to hear a lot more shit. When it comes to preserving hip-hop, like there was about to be a big rumble at Northern Lights on Tuesday. I took it upon myself to personally get on the phone and call both sides of the party like, “You’re not going to Northern Lights to fight. This is like the only hip-hop shit we got going in Detroit that’s real, and you guys are not going to fuck it up.” And they didn’t. So with the bad, there’s some good from me being on the scene and knowing a lot of rappers and stuff, so we can still preserve the scene. ’Cause I am the “Mayor of Hip-Hop.”

In that regard, you chose an interesting title for your album, Searching for Jerry Garcia. The Grateful Dead guitarist is not a name that carries a lot of currency in the hip-hop community.

You know what? It’s like a catchphrase when you say it to a Black person. They say, Who? It goes to show how closed minded people can be. Me, I’m open-minded, ’cause my father was a musician. He produced Tower of Power, Jones Girls, Marvin Gaye. Going to Catholic schools made me accepting of people of different cultures. I came across Jerry Garcia on a documentary on a whim. [My friend Mark and] I had just watched Searching for Bobby Fischer, and we’re watching this documentary come on. It says that Jerry Garcia’s demise came from stress, drugs and poor diet. Mark was like, “Fuck Bobby Fischer, that’s who they should be looking for.” And I was like, “Riiight!” He was the epitome of what an artist is. He did jazz, rock, whatever!

You had a lot of high-powered guests on the album. 50 Cent, Nate Dogg, Method Man and B-Real…

Method Man and B-Real! When people say Proof is down-to-earth, it’s because of those two people. I met Method Man in like ’94, when he first came out. He shot me his phone number, and we used to kick it on the phone, talkin’ ’bout doing a song together. We did the song, and it just showed me that once you did get on, you didn’t have to act a certain way. A lot of people tend to take that shit to their head. The things the fans say to you let you know how everybody else acts. When they say, What are you doing here? I live in Detroit for one, and I can come and see titties when I want to see titties! But that just shows you how distant others can be. [Laughs.] I think some people just let it go to their heads. I know that people let it go to their head, ’cause I catch myself in certain situations doing some wild shit. I’m like, That’s really not cool. I can be on the phone and just hang up. I’m like, [to myself], You couldn’t even say bye or anything? Like, where am I going? Maybe I’m distracted? Whatever it is, I know that that wasn’t right. Like, wow—what did I just do?!

I’m sure you don’t mind some of the public attention. But how do you deal with the overzealous fan who approaches you at an inopportune time? Like when you’re eating with your kids or taking a piss in the men’s room or something?

This is one thing I figured out about fans, it’s why I try to be gracious to them: The people at home don’t see the work when they’re at home watching TV. You don’t understand the work behind it. You just share the moment. Say Marilyn Manson’s my man. Say I’m watching Marilyn Manson on TV. I’m just a fan, right? When I see Marilyn Manson, he doesn’t know about my house, but I know my house and where I found my moment with Marilyn Manson at. So I gotta say something to you right? Now, I might say the dumbest shit in the world because I don’t know what to say. I feel like I know you. I don’t know you, but we had this moment at my home. At that moment that I’m talking to Marilyn Manson, he can’t feel what I’m feeling. They don’t share getting the beat, writing the rhyme, going in the studio, shooting the video. When the video’s shot, then we share just this one moment. But you can’t explain that to nobody that’s drunk at the bar.

Back before you were famous, back when Em was crashing at your house way back when. Did you ever imagine how big it would eventually get?

Let me tell you the illest story about what I say when people ask why I didn’t finish high school. I used to wake up, walk over to Em’s house to go to school at lunch. I had this little scam on lunch cards. I stole a bunch of lunch cards and gave them to people, then I would collect money from them at the end of the week. I’d go up there at lunch and stay for about three hours in a row. I’d never go to class! Em said to me one day, “Man, why are you going to high school? We’re gonna be rappers.” I was like, “Okay.” I go and talk to my mother. Say, “Mom, I want to drop out of high school and be a rapper.” She said, “Okay, you just got to get a job.” So I called Em, and I said, “Em, I can’t drop out of high school unless I got a job.” He said, “Okay, I’ll call you back.” He called back like three minutes later and had gotten me a job at Little Caesars. [Laughs.] Just imagine if he had been wrong.

http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2006/05/proof-stay-tru/

XXL 2009

Eminem, “Hard To Kill”

It’s felt sort of empty without him, hasn’t it? One of the biggest superstars on the planet, Eminem has been on a three-year hiatus, dealing with some awfully heavy personal issues. He’s back now, though. And up to his old tricks. Sick. But healthier than ever.

Interview By Datwon Thomas

Photography By Perou

Tucked away in the VIP room of Morton’s steak house in downtown Cleveland, Eminem sits at the head of a long, 12-seat dinner table, looking more like a high school baseball shortstop than a multimillionaire don of the hip-hop world. He’s rocking a white Jordan fitted cap to the back, with a platinum cross dangling atop a wrinkled white T-shirt, black sweats, and Nike Air Max on the feet. Along with his longtime manager and partner, Paul Rosenberg, D12 producer Denaun Porter, and an eight-member team of label support, assistants and security, the 36-year-old rap star is watching Michigan State handle Connecticut in an NCAA Final Four game, which is playing on a huge flat-screen hanging on the mahogany walls. Repping Detroit harder (and more successfully) than General Motors, the crew oohs and aahs and screams at every basket, urging the Spartans to victory. Em cracks jokes about his publicist peeing on people in a riot back in the days. (Never happened.) But just as everything seems dorm-roomish and festive, word comes down. “Let’s roll. Em has to be there now.”

That’s a sentiment no doubt shared by millions of fans worldwide. One of hip-hop’s biggest-selling artists ever (his 34 million total domestic album sales ranks second only to Tupac), Eminem has been mostly MIA for the past three years. After an aborted European tour in summer 2005, the troubled icon ducked out of the spotlight to deal with a growing drug problem—one exacerbated, the next year, by the failure of his second marriage to Kimberly Scott, and even more by the loss of his best friend and rap partner, Proof, who died in a tragic, and still somewhat hazy, shooting incident in a bar on the very 8 Mile Road that Em has made so famous.

But he’s back. This spring marks the release of his sixth solo album, Relapse, the first of two on tap for the year. Judging from a quick listen to the setup singles “Crack a Bottle” (with fellow Interscope Records pillars Dr. Dre and 50 Cent) and “We Made You,” and a few select unreleased tracks, it’s pretty clear that rap’s nimble-tongued clown prince wants to reclaim his throne. With an emphasis on the cartoony, TV-steeped ultraviolence that rocketed him to fame 10 years ago, Em’s rapping in his Slim Shady guise, with a nod to his favorite Marvel comic-book hero, the trigger-happy vigilante Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher. “The Punisher just seemed appropriate for my return to the scene,” he says. “Shady with a vengeance!” Everyone feels the wrath—from horror-flick serial killers, like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, to train-wreck starlets, like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, to failed vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. In the video for the first single, “We Made You,” Kim Kardashian gets the wood-chipper treatment.

But tonight there’s more serious business to attend to. It’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 24th annual induction ceremony, and the blue-eyed, formerly golden-haired god of hip-hop’s modern era will be introducing the greatest group from hip-hop’s early years, Run-DMC, before they take the stage and receive their prestigious due. Fresh from Morton’s, backstage at the museum’s performance hall, crumpled-up, handwritten speech tight in his fist, Em paces the small dressing room right next to the one occupied by Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. “I’m about to rock this shit!” he says, goofing on his own nervous energy, as a black leather coat arrives for him to wear. “I don’t know what I’m about to rock, but I’m about to do it! I’ma, ummm, rock this speech!”

He hops up, dons the coat and a matching Run-DMC–style fedora, takes the walkway to the stage and busts a b-boy stance at the podium. The audience leaps to its feet. The place goes crazy. Somebody screams “It’s Eminem! He’s back!”

Where have you been? It seems like a whole generation of hip-hop has gone in the time that you’ve been away.

Yeah, well, there were a few things that played into that factor. First of all, I went for seven years straight and never took a break. It got to the point where I felt like I needed to pull back. After the last tour, the Anger Management 3, as everybody knows, I went into rehab for a drug problem that, honestly, didn’t get better when I went into rehab. I wasn’t ready to go into rehab. I felt that, at the time, everyone else was ready for me to go. And I wasn’t ready.

You weren’t ready mentally?

I wasn’t ready mentally. I wasn’t ready to give up the drugs. I didn’t really think I had a problem. Basically, I went in, and I came out. I relapsed, and I spent the next three years struggling with it. Also, at that time, I felt like I wanted to pull back, because my drug problem had got so bad. I felt like, Maybe if I take a break, maybe this will help.

I started to get into the producer role more… I can still be out there with my music, like with the Re-Up album, but I don’t have to be in the spotlight the whole time.

What types of drugs were you were taking?

Ever since the beginning of my career I dabbled in Vicodin, Valium, Ambien. It was kind of like a recreational thing that, for some reason, when it first started out, like ecstasy and shit like that, I was able to do it and step away from it. Drinking, I was able to do it and step away from it. But slowly it started progressing. For a while, there were, like, four to six months where I struggled with ecstasy. I had found myself taking it before every show.

So you would go out, rock these shows…

Yeah, like, on the Warped Tour, me and Proof would split a hit, like half a hit or whatever, and on top of it, I was drinking or whatever. Then I would come home and be like, Aight, I’m not gonna do it around the kids. So those would be the times I’d clean myself out. I’d be home for a week, two weeks or whatever and be like, I’m done with this. Then I’d get back out on the road and then… It started becoming that I’d be doing it all the time if people had it. I wouldn’t carry the shit on me. I wouldn’t have it myself. If we were around that kind of party atmosphere and somebody had it, which my music at that time always attracted that crowd, like the raver kids and shit like that, we’d end up hanging out with some kids somehow, and people would be around us and be like, “Hey, I got some mushrooms, I got this, I got that.” Slowly, after a period of time, it became where we were buying it on the road. So we would kinda say, “Who’s got the E?” It became where I wasn’t doing it anymore because people had it, I was doing it and actually purchasing the shit, just because. Then it got to a point where I felt like I needed it to be onstage.

My biggest thing was sleeping. I would take NyQuil and shit like that. I’d be like, Okay, well, this worked last night. But I got to take extra tonight, ’cause it ain’t gonna work. Now I got to get a prescription for something. I got to see my doctor.

Because you couldn’t sleep?

It’s between the schedule and all the shit when it starts to get crazy. When you’re in album cycle and touring and shit like that, the schedule… You got to be somewhere at certain times. You only got this little window to sleep. And if you don’t sleep, you are kind of fucked for the next day. So it was all the mental things that I went through. I struggled with ecstasy, kinda struggled with drinking. But I was able to cut it off, which is what I never understood about pills. But that’s obviously what you learn in rehab. It’s what becomes your drug of choice. Certain addicts may not struggle with… I may not have a problem with liquor. But if I drink liquor and I get to where I get a hangover the next day, I’m screaming for a Vicodin. “Oh, I wish I had a Vicodin!” So, basically, I struggled off and on with prescription pills, like, the next three years. Then, everybody knows, I went through a divorce. I was trying to put my family back together. That ended up not working out. Then losing my best friend. It was kinda like going through those struggles. None of that shit was easy. My addiction got worse and worse and worse. I had to come to the realization, I mean, I’ve been clean for a year now, but I had to come to the realization that I want to do this. This ain’t something that anybody can just tell me, know what I mean? This isn’t something that everyone can want for me.

When did you know that it was time for you to go to rehab?

There were a bunch of moments where I felt like, I want to do it, I want to do it. Ah, maybe now is not the time. Maybe I’ll just do this for a little longer. I started realizing, like,

I took a break from the spotlight, and I felt like I wanted to be with my family and spend more time with my kids and stuff like that. But the whole time, I’m walking around the house high most of the time. So I’m missing out on the best parts of their lives. There were several moments. And it got to the point where the guilt that I started feeling inside for doing the shit… I wasn’t fooling anybody but myself. I had to come to that realization. At the time, I’m 35 years old, how long am I going to keep doing this? I felt like I needed to grow up, and if I didn’t grow up, it was like, now or never.

Without Proof here, is there someone else that can help you with the emotional weight you’ve been dealing with?

I’ve always had a real tight circle. All the guys from D12, everybody in the circle, management and other members of our crew, have just always been there from day one. Everyone felt his loss, from his kids, to his wife, to everyone. But, for some reason, in hindsight, the way I felt was almost like it happened to just me… Maybe at that time I was a little bit selfish with it. I think it kind of hit me so hard. It just blindsided me. I just went into such a dark place that, with everything, the drugs, my thoughts, everything. And the more drugs I consumed, and it was all depressants I was taking, the more depressed I became, the more self-loathing I became… By the way, I’m just now at the point where I’m better talking about it. It took me so long to get out of that place where I couldn’t even speak about it without crying or wanting to cry… Proof was the anchor. He was everything to D12. And not just the group—for me, personally, he was everything.

When I say I went into a dark place, it feels like I literally crawled into a hole. There were days I’d just sit around all day and take pills and try to numb myself. It was almost an excuse for me to take more pills, like, I just lost Proof, so it’s okay for me to take a couple of pills.

I started spiraling out of control with my thoughts, with the drugs, with everything. When I would go to the studio, I kept trying to write songs about him. I think I might have wrote and recorded at least five or six songs about him. None of them came out the way I wanted them to, and all of them made me depressed. All of them made me go deeper into that hole… Nothing I wrote was good enough for him. Everything was, like, self-loathing.

Did you ever take any personal responsibility for what happened to him?

Yeah, I went through that kind of thing as well. I felt like, Well, maybe if I would have been with him at the club that night… He knows I was trying to get him to chill out and stop going to the club so much.

How did you react to all the conflicting information that came out immediately following the incident?

I got a bunch of conflicting stories, a bunch of conflicting things, and none of them ever made sense to me. There were things that I’d heard that they were saying, that Proof shot the dude first. It’s so not in his character to do that. There were other stories that matched what I knew Proof would have did. I had to go through the process in my head of, like, regardless of what happened, it happened. It’s not gonna bring him back. I don’t know if I’ve accepted it is the right word, but I’m dealing with it. Life for me will never be the same.

In what way did Proof’s death affect your work?There was, like, a two-year period where I couldn’t write shit. With what was going on and shit, I just couldn’t. I was so cluttered in my mind that everything I was writing wasn’t worth recording. I’d record it, and I’d get through half a song and be like, I don’t like this. I’d get through a song, and the next day I’d be like, Nah, that don’t sound like me. And then I started going in the studio and trying to freestyle. Like, I’d do a line at a time and be like, “Stop the tape,” and be like, “Okay, I got a line here.” You know, kinda like how Jay-Z would do it. Obie did a lot of that, too.

You know, so it was almost like, I don’t know if I was challenging myself to see if I could actually do it or if I was just being lazy with writing because I wasn’t feeling what I was actually writing… So it was like, going through them time periods, I could spend more time and feel good about recording music just making beats. But then when I came out of my writer’s block, I went into the studio with Dre… My first trip was in Orlando. We had planned the trip for, like, two weeks, and I called him on the phone, and I told him, “I don’t know, man, I might be coming out of this writer’s block.” And he was like, “Uh oh! That’s what I want to hear!” I went to Orlando, and I think I wrote, like, 11 songs in the couple weeks that we were out there. Dre kinda caught fire right around the same time that I was comin’ out of my thing… Once we started getting that chemistry back, it just went so crazy that I did two albums in, like, six or seven months. I was literally writing songs faster than I could record them. I’ll take a day out to do vocals, and then my voice will be gone for, like, the next two days. So I’ll have to rest my voice. So, in between, those two days that I’m resting my voice, I’m writing two or three more songs. Before I knew it, we had two albums’ worth of material.

Your new single, “We Made You,” heavily references Amy Winehouse’s sound. How did you keep up with new music during your time off? Were you on the Internet a lot?Nah, I wasn’t. Either I go buy CDs or I have Paul or somebody sending me something if I hadn’t heard it yet.I stayed up on the music, and obviously I watch TV and saw what was going on. And without naming any names, it just felt like hip-hop was going downhill. And it seemed like kinda fast. You know, in them three years, it was like everybody just cares about the hook and the beat; nobody really cares about substance. But with this new T.I. album, with this new Lil Wayne album of recent, it seems like things are looking a lot better now. You can appreciate Lil Wayne using different words to rhyme and actually rhyming words that you know. Or T.I., where you hear shit and you’re like, Whoa, ah, I wish I would have thought of that! You know what I mean? Or you hear all the compound-syllable rhyming and all that. It just seems like now the craft is getting cared about more.

XXL featured a new generation of MCs on the cover recently: Charles Hamilton, Wale, B.o.B, Asher Roth. Have you heard their music?Yeah. Well, B.o.B we actually have a publishing deal with. So I’ve been up on him for a while. But he’s insane. Like, talentwise. He’s, like, 20 years old, and the dude, like, fuckin’ plays guitar, he plays keyboard, he writes raps. He’s not only good at writing songs in the sense of just raps, but hooks. He’s fuckin’ insane. He can sing… I just worked with him a few weeks ago in the studio, and I’m like, “Do you fuckin’ dance, too? Jesus Christ!”

Charles Hamilton I’ve worked with a couple of years ago, toward the end of 2007. I just made the beat to a song, but, you know, I think Charles Hamilton is dope. Asher Roth, I haven’t had a chance to, like, really get into everything, like, really get into what he’s about, because I’ve only heard a couple of songs. There was talk about people saying he sounded like me, and he was doing this and that and, you know, trying to take what I do and do it. You know, shit like that. I’ve heard things. But the stuff that I’ve heard from him—honestly, which certainly isn’t enough for me to make my own opinion and say, “Yeah, he does sound like me” or “No, he doesn’t.” But the couple of songs I’ve heard, I don’t really think he does. You know what I mean? He’s doing his own thing. I can respect it, too, because, at the end of the day, I think he’s dope.

I think people were looking to see if there was going to be any kind of friction or whatever. Because you’re both White. You know, like the “White rapper spot” has to be reserved for one person.Man, that’s stupid.

Clearly.

As big as hip-hop is, you know what I mean? Like, who gives a shit? I mean, at first it was like, just to me it was like, is it because this dude is White that everyone’s automatically making comparisons? Obviously, to an extent, it is. That’s what everyone is gonna be looking for: Does he sound like Eminem? But I was flipping through the channels, and I caught something on spring break [with him performing], and I heard a song I had never heard before, and I was like, This dude sounds nothing like me.

Let’s talk about your new album. The early material to come out seems like a return to the crazy, twisted, psychopathic stuff you first came out with 10 years ago on The Slim Shady LP. Like, a serial-killer-type theme.

There’s a lot of stuff on there like that. When I came home from Orlando, out the blue, just the title, Relapse, hit me. Just the word stuck in my head… I kinda wanted to go back to what got me here in the first place. I’d asked Dre, “What do you think people want to hear from me anymore?” He’d be like, “People want to hear you lose your fuckin’ mind again.” Not only does Relapse mean coming out of rehab, but I wanted to go back to Proof’s idea of, “Let’s just say the most fucked-up shit that we can.” So I’ve kinda gone back to that direction.

Besides Dre, you’ve been working with 50 Cent again, too. How is your relationship with 50? He’s going through this whole battle with Rick Ross, with this Pimpin’ Curly stuff. How do you view all of it?

Mine and 50’s relationship has always been the same. It’s always been good. If anything, we’ve gotten closer in the last few years. 50 will just come to my house and just stay the night. Stay the weekend in one of the bedrooms and just hang out. And we talk about shit. I mean, a lot of our talk is about music, you know. But we just—we talk about shit, and we just make jokes and hang out. It doesn’t always have to be about business. You know, he’s going through this Rick Ross thing, which is kinda his thing. I guess, you know, at the moment, it’s just, let 50 do 50. I think that the Pimpin’ Curly shit is fuckin’ hilarious, though. I’m sorry, to me, that’s when 50’s at his best. When he’s doing just the funny shit. In real life, 50’s a fuckin’ clown, man. He’s actually a really funny dude.

Pictures of you came out last year where it looked like you’d gained a lot of weight. You’re back looking real chiseled now. What happened?

I gained a bunch of weight in my time off. I got lazy. I was eating a lot, just because the pills make you feel hungry. Then, just this past year, I got clean, I got sober, and I started running. I had a knee surgery last year, but as soon as I could, I hit the treadmill. So I run every day. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been up to 10 miles a day. I’ve been trying to really push myself. Just to see how much I could actually run, but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. At the end of the day, I’m an addict. So I have addictive behavior. So I’m obsessive-compulsive about a lot of things. I’m obsessive-compulsive about my music, you know. Now I’m obsessive-compulsive about working out. I can’t do nothing in moderation… You’d think that the signs, like, all the addiction that runs in my family, I would have been a little more hip to that. But I just—I guess I wasn’t.

With all the hype surrounding your comeback, and with the terrible state of the record business, the hip-hop business in particular, do you feel like you’re coming back to save your label, or hip-hop as a genre, or even the music industry as a whole?

I don’t know if I feel like I’m coming back to save anything like that. I mean, obviously, if I can, you know, save the label and help generate more money for that, that’s great, too. But the truth is, I get bored just sitting around. I’m ready to be back out there. I love to be respected for the music that I make, and that’s what I’m in it for. The beautiful thing about this record is, I don’t expect it to do anything… Money is not necessarily something that I need anymore, so I’m doing it because I want to do it. I’m doing it because I want people to hear the music and like the music… If people like it, cool. If they don’t, they don’t. I certainly would like the benefits of what would come with it. If it could help generate more money for the label, then that’s good. But, at the end of the day, it’s just about the music.

Eminem on XXL 2009

Eminem on XXL 2009

Eminem on XXL 2009

Eminem on XXL 2009

Link: http://www.xxlmag.com/news/throwbacks/2013/10/eminem-hard-to-kill-originally-published-june-2009/4/

Scans from: http://www.xxlmag.com/news/throwbacks/2013/10/eminem-hard-to-kill-originally-published-june-2009/4/

XXL 2013

Eminem Manager Paul Rosenberg On The Evolution Of Slim Shady

Eminem’s highly-anticipated eighth studio album, the Marshall Mathers LP 2, officially dropped yesterday, and Billboard is already projecting it to be his seventh straight No. 1 album and the second-highest debuting record of the year. But there have been a number of elements in the buildup to this release that have made MMLP2—the followup to 2010′s Recovery—a much different Eminem product than what fans have seen in the past.

Much of that can be attributed to the work of longtime Em manager Paul Rosenberg, who has helped guide Marshall’s career since 1999′s Slim Shady LP announced his arrival on a major scale. His followup to that, 2000′s original Marshall Mathers LP, was a massive, diamond-selling statement, which saw Em pushing back against the critics, his mother, fame and his family life, all in one dazzling explosion of emotion, raw rapping and songwriting brilliance. So when Em announced this new record would be the second in the Marshall Mathers lineage, it opened it up to direct comparisons lyrically, thematically and, in a radically different music industry, promotionally. XXL spoke to Paul Rosenberg last week about MMLP2, the marketing rollout that saw Em do spots on Saturday Night College Football and with Call Of Duty, and how the character of Slim Shady has changed over the past 13 years. —Dan Rys (@danrys)

XXL: When did you guys get started working on the album?

Paul Rosenberg: Well, Em is always recording whenever he gets the chance; that’s sort of what he does on a day-to-day basis when he’s not out doing shows or whatever the case may be, he’s in the studio. It’s kind of a continual process, but I would say he really became serious about focusing on it and figuring out when he might want to put it out sometime around early March, 2012.

When he first started did he know he wanted to make it the second Marshall Mathers LP?
No, I don’t think so. I think it’s something that came into focus earlier in the process than it usually does—meaning the title—but I don’t think he started off before he recorded anything saying, “This is what I’m gonna call the album.” I think it’s a concept that came out of the work he was doing.

How was it different than any of the other albums that he’s put out?How was it different?  Well, it’s the first time he’s ever done an album that’s a continuation of another album, so it’s different in that sense. I think it’s the first time he reached back and decided to revisit some of the themes that he had explored in some earlier records and give them a continuation. When he talks about the album he doesn’t talk about it as a sequel, he talks about it as a revisitation.

It seems like some of the emotions are flipped—well, not necessarily flipped, but different…
Well, you know what it is? It’s not that the emotions are different at all, it’s that you’re dealing with a person almost 15 years later and their perspective on some of the same themes. And obviously that’s gonna change for anybody, but specifically for him, who has been through so much in that 15 years, that you’re looking at things differently. So I think what we’re getting to hear is a guy who has had 15 years of life experience as an adult since he’s recorded these records when he was 25, 26, 27 years old. And it’s a very different perspective.

It’s fascinating, too, looking at the two albums side-by-side. His delivery is more mature, but there’s still a lot of—I don’t want to say anger—but the raw emotion that he’s so well-known for.
Yeah, I think that’s definitely the thread that connects the two projects. And you’re always gonna get that from Marshall, he wears his heart on his sleeve when he raps, and you’re always gonna feel what he’s going through and talking about. I think that’s one of the things that makes people connect to him so much, is that they feel something when they connect to his music, and they can relate to his emotions, even though it may not be the exact circumstances you’re going through, you can always relate to [it].

Was there any pressure coming off such another massive album with Recovery and then the inevitable comparisons that were going to come with making this a part two? Was there any special pressure?
Yeah, there’s always pressure; he’s achieved a level where the expectations are always going to be high. So yes, there’s pressure from those expectations, but we just try to do our best to make the right record for him at that time and what he’s doing creatively, and support that vision. My job, really, is to support that vision and figure out the best way to market and promote it.

He talks a lot on the album about the difference between him and Slim Shady. What’s the biggest difference you see between Slim Shady on this album versus the first Marshall Mathers album?
The difference between Slim Shady on those records? That’s an interesting question. [Laughs] I think back then, Slim Shady was connected to a younger guy who didn’t have the same perspective, going back to what I said before. And now it’s connected to a person who is older. So I don’t know if he definitely has more of a moral compass, so to speak, as a character, but I think Slim Shady thinks a little more now, as a character.

How did you guys get Rick Rubin involved?
It started off with Rick wanting to produce tracks with him. I had had several conversations with Rick over the course of the past few years—I had met him through some mutual friends—obviously, we’ve been a longtime fan of him and his career and what he’s done. After talking to him and learning how interested he was in potentially working with Em, it was just about finding the right time and the right project. So one of the things that I keep pointing out to people is that prior to Recovery, Em didn’t really work with a whole lot of producers. He worked with Dre, and he produced his own stuff himself and his small crew of people that he worked with, and that was it. So moving forward with Recovery, for whatever reason he opened the door up a little more and realized that he enjoyed the experience of working with more people and keeping it a little more open. So it was really about timing, and the timing worked out because he had just opened up to that concept. So the difference from working with Rick and a lot of other producers who may just send tracks is that they went into the studio together and created the stuff that they had made from complete scratch. There was no pre-existing beats, there was no pre-existing anything, there was just a couple of guys going through break beats and seeing what moves the needle for them.

And it’s crazy hearing some of the songs that have come out, the way they put it together. Some songs have four, five, six different parts to them, and that’s wild.
Yeah it is. Part of that is the stuff they sampled. The Joe Walsh record, “Life’s Been Good,” [on the Eminem track "So Far"] has all those different parts in it naturally. But then the thing I think is so awesome about “Berzerk,” it really sounds like something that could have been pulled from the License To Ill sessions from The Beastie Boys, especially with the way that the beat changes and these sort of random breakdowns and variations in the beat. It reminds you of something like “Hold It Now, Hit It” or “Slow And Low” or something like that.

How did you pull together the marketing rollout? You guys had the Call Of Duty placement, and then the College Football appearance—were you trying to get the biggest possible platform with those?
It’s not really about being on the biggest scale possible ever. It’s about doing things that make a lot of sense and that have some sort of connection to Eminem and his fans. So when we look at what the possible partners might be and the ways to creatively—or as they call it, strategically—market the album, we look at things like Beats, because there’s a natural relationship obviously with Eminem and Beats, being that it’s Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s brand, and they’re the guys that put him in the game. [Based on] the obviously long-standing relationship that they have, nobody’s gonna look at that and say, “Oh, that’s weird.” And then similarly, with Call Of Duty, not only have we done stuff with Activision in the past with the DJ Hero game we did with them through licensing music and being involved with previous Call Of Duty games. But when they do research for their fanbase—and trust me, they do a lot of it—they continually get feedback that Eminem is one of the most popular, if not the most popular artist for their fans. So when we can connect to that fanbase through something that they love with a game like that, it makes total sense as well. But then also, those are bigger-scale—and obviously with Call Of Duty being the biggest entertainment property in the world that’s a big benefit, and of course we look at that—but also, it just has to fit. So we had this song “Survival,” which is just a natural fit for a game like that, so that makes sense, too.

And then it’s not just about being big, because we’ve done stuff with things that have been on a smaller scale. But when we talked about ways to do things differently… And that was the outset from the beginning; okay, we know how to market and promote a record, obviously, but how can we do it differently?

Do you remember how you’d worked the original MMLP?

I mean, it was very traditional; I don’t even remember us having a marketing partner for that album. Back then, that was kind of less common, frankly. And because the industry was twice the size it is now, there was more money. And when there’s more money, you don’t have to necessarily look for more ways to be more creative. And I’m not saying that Eminem albums don’t generate a lot of money, I’m saying that the extra dollars to just throw around don’t exist as much as they used to.

How else has the music business changed for you in the past 15 or so years? Is that mainly it—you have to get more creative?
Well, you know, I look at it like this—there’s two separate things, there’s the music business and then there’s the record business. The music business is doing fantastic; the record business is having problems and we all know why, and it’s half of what it was 10 years ago, maybe even less. So when we approached things in terms of selling a record, yes, we have to look at things differently and have to be more creative sometimes, ’cause we can’t do all the stuff that we used to do, and we can’t take the things for granted that we used to be able to.

It’s incredible—Recovery still went platinum in two weeks. Em still moves records like that.
Yeah, on a very consistent basis. He’s got an amazing fanbase that really connects with him, and I think that the interesting thing about him is that he doesn’t just have this sort of static fanbase, but he’s still continuing to grow new fans. He’s an artist that has kids that like him that are 12 years old and adults that like him that are 40 years old. So it’s really broad.

 Paul Rosenberg, Eminem's manager in an interview to XXL-- Photo Credit: XXL website

Link: http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2013/11/eminem-manager-paul-rosenberg-on-the-evolution-of-slim-shady

XXL 2011

 Eminem, Yelawolf, Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz , Crooked I , Royce da 5'9
XXL Issue 2011