The Making of Bad Meets Evil's "Hell: The Sequel"

We got down with Eminem, Royce Da 5'9", and just about everyone else involved with creating the long-awaited EP.

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It’s been over a decade since Eminem and Royce Da 5’9” got together for their classic 12” single “Nuthin’ To Do”/“Scary Movies.” A lot has changed since then. For one, Eminem went on to become one of the most successful rappers in the history of hip-hop. Meanwhile, Royce has had a stellar underground career as one of rap’s most respected wordsmiths.

Yeah, some things are different. Then again some things are still the same. For example, the undeniable chemistry between Slim Shady and Nickel Nine. Their lyrical one-upmanship always brought the best out of each other. And although a pointless beef separated them for a while, they’re back together and picking up from where they left off. With Royce (along with his Slaughterhouse brethren) now on the Shady roster, Em and Royce—billed as the duo Bad Meets Evil—are finally giving rap fans what they always wanted with their new EP, Hell: The Sequel.

Just like we did with their classic 12” single, we got down with just about everyone involved with the making of the new album including Em, Royce, Mr. Porter, Bangladesh, and even some of the behind the scenes players. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to hell...

As told to Noah Callahan-Bever (@N_C_B), Toshitaka Kondo (@ToshitakaKondo), Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin), and Andre Grant (@DreJones).

Welcome To Hell

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“Welcome To Hell”

Produced by: Havoc

Eminem: “I think that might have been one of the beats that Havoc sent for Recovery Somehow I got a CD of a couple more of his beats. I brought that one in one day, and we just started fucking with it. I think I laid the first verse and was like, ‘Yo!’ I think Royce was up in the studio or something and we started doing the record, and decided to trade off.”

Royce da 5’9”: “I remember you had an idea for a melodic hook, and in the hook, you wanted to say something about 'oxygen'. And that’s why I said something like, ‘Emcees, they want to breathe our air.’ Because I thought we were going to have a hook saying something about ‘oxygen.’”

Eminem: “Oh yeah. And then we decided, ‘Fuck that hook, that’s just wrong.’ [Laughs.] The back and forth started getting too fun.”

Royce da 5’9”: “No bars got counted.”

Eminem: “After it was done, I thought about it working as the intro. It might have been the next day or something, coming back we decided what we were going to do with it and I went and recorded the part about, ‘Welcome to the album.’”

Havoc: Being in involved with Eminem’s Recovery made it possible for me to be involved with the Bad Meets Evil. I’m always constantly hitting Em with tracks. I would say I sent him that beat a while ago. [Laughs.] Those were tracks that I sent trying to get on Relapse.

“Then—during the Jay-Z and Eminem concert—I was told that they were interested in a track that I had sent them. I told them that it was still available. They told me it wasn’t a definite, but Eminem was highly interested in the track. I didn’t really think too much of it because I didn’t wanna get my hopes up. Just as easy as it can make it, it can easily not make it.

“I made the beat in NYC in my crib. I’m always digging for samples, weird sounding things that people never used before. Things that might make you go, ‘What the fuck is that? That shit is wack,’ or, ‘That shit is dope.’ I just fuck with all ends of the spectrum when it comes to samples.

“I was fucking with some Gregorian chants because no one ever fucked with it. It sounds real eerie, hard, and dark, and it just stuck. I’ll be working on a lot of native instruments. It’s like when I sampled ‘It’s Mine’ from Scarface. I was like, ‘Why the fuck hasn’t anybody tried to sample that yet?’ Like, that’s a no-brainer.”

Fast Lane

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“Fast Lane”

Produced by: Eminem, Supa Dups

Eminem: “Royce had beat CDs that he was getting from various people at the time mostly for his own shit. I was getting my own beat CDs for ideas. I was just getting beat CDs from Shady, the A&Rs at the label. I was just going through them and I think that was one that was on a beat CD somewhere. I liked it and I wrote the hook.

“But when I wrote the hook I was thinking of someone else to sing it. I didn’t want to sing it. So I got Sly, one of Dre’s artists. Sly writes his own shit, and he’s sick with the pen, melodies and with the delivery, everything. I just heard his voice on it. So it was just like, ‘Yo, what if we put Sly on it?’”

Royce da 5’9”: “He was coming in town with Dre anyway.”

Eminem: “Yeah. That’s what it was. Dre was coming in town to work on Detox, but in between that we were like, ‘Let’s do some stuff for this other record.’ We work on music basically five days a week. There’s always something.”

Royce da 5’9”: “I do seven days a week—Marshall takes the weekends off. I try to come up [to Eminem’s studio] as much as possible, no matter what he’s doing. Just to draw inspiration, because I prefer working at night. I try to spend my days up here. Even after he goes home I go to the other studio. I’ve got my album, Slaughterhouse albums, there’s a long list of shit I’ve got to do.”

Eminem: “You wanna know about the Nicki Minaj line? I wasn’t saying anything that everyone wasn’t already thinking. I mean, obviously I’ve worked with Nicki. I did a song with her. She’s a phenomenal rapper, and phenomenal looking. [Laughs.] I mean look, it was right there. I thought it was funny. I think she sees the fun in it too, but no, I haven’t spoken to her about it. It’s just hip-hop.”

Royce da 5’9”: “[When I got to the studio,] Eminem pulled the beat up and asked me what I thought about it. I thought the beat was crazy and he was like, ‘You trying to do something with it?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, why not?’ So he took it in one room and I took it in another room. I just so happened to get done writing before him.

“I ran my first rhyme by him and he was like, ‘Okay, well shit, you gotta go first.’ So I laid mine down while he wasn’t in the room and he came in and heard how I ended mine. Em told me how he was gonna come in on the first line of the second verse, so I actually changed my last line to run into his first line so it would make sense. After that, it was the same thing with the second verse.

“That’s really the funnest part to both of us about working with each other. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle. I give you a word that you have to complete the syllable of, make the line make sense, and keep a continuous flow with the verse. That’s what we had the most fun doing with each other for the EP, the back and forth.”

Supa Dups: “I’m on the Recovery album. [I produced ‘W.T.P.’] Eminem’s people hit me up again and said, ‘Yo, Em wants more beats.’ When I got the call, I was in a session at the time and I just stopped the session cold turkey. I was like, ‘I have something very important to do.’ The people that were with me were looking at me like I was crazy. I never even told them why I stopped the session.

“I won’t say who the session was with because I don’t want to piss them off anymore. It was somebody that’s signed. They’re a little known, but not as known as Eminem. Eminem is the biggest rapper that ever existed. When Eminem says, ‘I want something,’ you give it to him.

“I made the beat in my studio in Fort Lauderdale. When I made it, I didn’t have Em in mind, I had 50 Cent in mind. We sent it to 50 and a couple of other people, but nobody really picked it up. When Em’s people asked me for the files, I was like, ‘Wow! Cool!’ Around the time of the Grammys is when I found out they recorded on the track.

“When I went to L.A., Grammy weekend, I met Em at his Grammy party because he invited all the producers that were involved on his album. I spoke to him and I was like, ‘Yeah, you asked me for the files to one of my tracks.’ But he still didn’t tell me what it was about.

“Later on, I met Royce Da 5’9” and he was like, ‘That’s the first single!’ I’m like, ‘Word?!’ But I still wasn’t sure, you know how the music business is. I didn’t find out that it was the first single until it leaked. I had never even heard the record before that, but when I heard it, I was like, ‘They ripped it from start to finish.’”

Dart Parker (Director Of A&R, Shady Records): “I got [the ‘Fast Lane’ beat]—it was called ‘Da Da Dee’—from [Supa Dups’ manager ] Mr. Morgan in early 2009. So I sent that and a few more for Relapse and didn’t really hear anything. I sent more beats for Recovery; obviously other producers, but I got some more Dups beats and then was like, ‘You know what? I really like that one, let me send it again.’

”Earlier this year, Tracy [McNew] calls me. She’s the GM of Shady [Records]. She was like, ‘Yo, I need to play a track for you over the phone.’ She plays it and it’s the ‘Da Da Dee’ beat. So, she’s like, ‘Hit the manager, hit the producer, whoever, just tell them Marshall’s writing to it and put it to the side.’

“I’m thinking it’s an Em song. I didn’t even know about the Bad Meets Evil project. That was some super top secret, area 51 shit. I had no idea.

“So, a month or so later, Paul filled me in on the actual project and he played me some songs in his office. He played ‘Fast Lane’ and it was the ‘Da Da Dee’ beat with a brand new paint job. Em had totally redressed it, 2.0-ed it, and made it his own. It’s kind of like how he does with things. He’ll get a beat and then keep the vibe and skeleton of it and then change some things, add this or that or intros, and just make it his own.

“He definitely kept the vibe of it, but just took the vocal melody and made it a subplot instead of the main feature. I think the rhymes would have probably had to compete with that too much. He obviously liked it, so he kept it as an undertone.”

The Reunion

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“The Reunion”

Produced by: Sid Roams

Eminem: “It’s a true story. Absolute true story from top to bottom.”

Royce da 5’9”: “Yeah, can’t you tell?”

Eminem: “That one came together more towards the end. I kind of felt like, and this is obviously after we decided that we should do an EP and put it out, we would still have fun with it when we’re not trying to make a hit record. I thought, ‘What does this sound like it’s missing?’ And I felt like maybe us telling a story. So I laid a verse. Royce came in, listened to it, wrote a verse, laid it. I’m not sure if I had a hook yet.”

Royce da 5’9”: “Yeah, the hook was on it when I got to the studio. See, what’ll happen is, he’ll get to the studio real early before I even wake up. By the time I get here everyday he’s already knocked out 500 sit ups, and laid verses to shit. [Laughs.] So I’ll just come in like, ‘Man..’”

Eminem: “500? More like 500,000! [Laughs.]”

Royce da 5’9”: “[Laughs.] My bad. So when I came in I was just like, ‘Man I ain’t get enough sleep for this shit.’ I looked at him like, ‘Man, I hate you.’ I went outside with my pad and just took my time. Wrote a verse, and then he said something about Paul using the word ‘dazzling’ with the back and forth shit that we do. So we felt like we should go back and forth on the third one.”

Eminem: “And then we were like, ‘Yo this should be how we squashed the beef. This is the reunion.’ Basically I just felt like we needed a story. I felt like that was the one thing the EP was missing.”

Royce da 5’9”: “He’s lying. What inspired him to do it was he always wanted to torture a girl with the Relapse CD. Always. He dreams about it and everything.”

Eminem: “That’s what it was.”

Royce da 5’9”: “You got really mad when she mentioned accents—”

Eminem: “Fuck that shit! [Laughs.]”

Royce da 5’9”: “When she snapped that Relapse CD, that was it.”

Eminem: “Yeah. That was a breaking point.”

Royce da 5’9”: “That’s when it got real.”

Eminem: “I just, I wake up in the morning, man...and I live this crazy life. [Laughs.] This crazy life...that exists...in my head. Like, this is the life that I live. Right here. In my head. I didn’t plan on the story going that way. When you’re writing you don’t plan.

“I don’t know if other artists do, but I just kind of go where the pen takes me like, ‘What if this happened?,’ as I’m writing it. Like, ‘Where can this lead me to?’ So I just go where the pen takes me. Especially on story raps, when I’m telling a story. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Once I saw where he was going and he had the idea of ‘What if I was at a club? Then he’d be at a club, and I’m on my way to a white trash party,’ and that’s how we met.”

Bravo of Sid Roams: “Alchemist has done a lot for putting our name out there. We gotta lend a lot of credit to him for having mentioned us to important, strong people. [That’s how] we met up with Riggs Morales—who works over at Shady—like five years ago. Riggs took a real liking to us, but at the time it wasn’t like there was anything in the catalog that really matched our sounds.

“But he remembered our name and ambiguously said, ‘Yo, there are some projects we’re working on that are really exciting. We need a new batch.’ But there were no specifics attached to that. [Laughs.] We were like, ‘Alright. Glad you remembered us.’

"The next thing we heard was, ‘Your beat has been picked, we just want to do some preliminary stuff. Just want to make sure we can hold this.’ We were like, ‘Hell yeah. We’ve been wanting to work with the whole Shady roster for a long time.’”

Joey Chavez of Sid Roams: “When we made the beat, we used this program called Reason. One of its great features is that you can stack synthesizers and different synth patches to create your own textures and that can be the impetus for a beat. Then the drums and everything were actually built on an MPC 2500 and we just kind of complimented Reason with that. The inspiration has been watching guys like DJ Khalil doing stuff with Reason that we could never do with MPCs before.

“That being said, Em and Luis Resto added some stuff on top of it to compliment what was already there and beef it up. It’s definitely a collaborative piece no matter how you look at it. And then the mixing, anyone who knows production and beats, knows that in the mix a lot of sweetening can happen and that really makes it radio-ready and audience-ready.

“There was a lot of music that was made in respects to this album and the stuff that rose to the top is the cream of the crop. A lot of people are like, ‘Sid Roams is on there?’ [Laughs.] I’ve been reading a lot of people’s comments around the Internet and a lot of people are pleasantly surprised by that too.

“I see [guys like Em and 50] reaching out to unlikely underground producers and making great music out of that. They’re not just saying, ‘I only mess with people with this particular bandwidth.’ They’re listening to everything. I mean, these are savvy businessmen and hip-hop heads. I really respect it when I see their ability to hear the potential in what’s around them and not miss it for any egotistical or close-minded reasons.”

Above The Law

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“Above The Law”

Produced by: Mr. Porter

Royce da 5’9”: “That was another one I started and presented it to him.”

Eminem: “No you didn’t. [Laughs.]”

Royce da 5’9”: Wait, what the hell happened with that song? [Laughs.]”

Eminem: “I had the beat first, and wrote something to it, but mine was telling some funny story and our verses didn’t match. I called Royce like, ‘Yo, I think I might have a verse to this.’ And he said, ‘What’s it about?’ And I said, ‘Just rap.’ I kind of wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it, but then he came on some harder shit than I was talking about. Mine was kind of funny and it didn’t match, but his verse was retarded so I wanted to keep it. So then I just rewrote another verse, went in, and laid it. But his had to be a second verse, because he wrote it with that in mind, that it was going to be the second verse. So we couldn’t change it.”

Royce da 5’9”: “I was trying my best to get him to lay that shit. I was like, ‘Just lay what you got man.’ Because I really wanted to keep that tone.”

Eminem: “I was like, ‘No.’ [Laughs.] I just approached the record different. Mine was on some funny, conceptual, telling a story, but it was kind of a funny story. I don’t even fucking remember. His shit was more hip-hop. His was more battle rap, so my shit wouldn’t have made sense at all. So I figured, ‘Let me just rewrite a new first verse.’”

Mr. Porter: “I have a couple of artists named Keely Ferguson and Claret Jai—Claret is on the Fast & Furious soundtrack on the Ludacris and Slaughterhouse song. We came up with a formula how we write together: I’ll give them somewhat of a treatment—almost how you do a video treatment—and they’ll start writing from that. Once I started the beat I just needed the hook.

“I spent so much time on the beat that I was kind of out of it when it came to the melodies. I had done one chorus myself because I sing, but I hated [my chorus]. So I dropped it off to her and I told her exactly what I was looking for. And her and two other writers came up with the hook. Claret Jai just laid it down and I took it right to Em.

“Em heard it and was like, ‘Wow this is crazy.’ I think him and Royce got that one together and they both ended up doing verses. We needed something high energy and that was one of the really high energy joints that we had.”

Im On Everything

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“I’m On Everything” f/ Mike Epps

Produced by: Mr. Porter

Royce da 5’9”: “That was actually the first record we recorded, and it was going to be for my album. After we had been cool for a while and spent some time building the relationship back and I got this beat from Denaun [Porter]. What made me want him on there was that I’m such a fan of vintage Em, and I’m real Internet savvy.

“I pay a lot of attention to comments and shit like that, and I seen a lot of people asking for vintage Em. And I was trying to see if old Nickel could bring vintage Em out because I wanted him to actually rap about drugs. So once we talked about how serious we take his sobriety and shit like that, and I was just like, ‘He’ll figure out a way to pull it off.’ He always does.”

Eminem: “Yeah. I had trouble with that, too. It took me a second to think, ‘What the fuck do I want to rap about?’ I had to just step back from it, ‘cause when I first heard the record I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s dope. I like it.’ He played me his verse and the hook, and I was like, ‘The beat is crazy. His verse is crazy. But what the fuck do I rap about?’ I’m not on everything. I’m not on anything!

“So I had to think back like, ‘Wait a minute. What about when I was on something? Let me just go back to that state of mind.’ It’s a fun record too, and obviously not based on a real situation.”

Royce da 5’9”: “That’s when it got fun.”

Eminem: “Yeah. That was the first time we ever did it to that caliber, that much going back and forth. Then it got so fun that we were like, ‘Yo we should do it some more.’ So we did, and that’s pretty much how the EP happened.”

Mr. Porter: “I’m a stand-up comedy fan. A lot of times stand-up comedians say things that are so catchy. Mike Epps is a very off-the-cuff-type comedian, he doesn’t really have a script. That piece that was about how kids were on every drug possible caught my ear and I thought it was funny. I took it, chopped it up, made a beat around it, and I gave it to Royce.

“When Royce was doing Slaughterhouse, me and him reconnected. We always had respect for each other, but once we started working together, it was magic. I felt like we were onto something so we just kept doing songs. But we didn’t know what the fuck we were using them for.

Paul Rosenberg (Eminem's Manager, and President of Shady Records and CEO of Goliath Artists): “I’d say they started recording this stuff like the middle of October, November of last year. When they had three or four songs done and then they started playing them for me, we obviously said, ‘Well, what are we doing with this stuff, it sounds really good.’ They just said, ‘Well, let’s record more and maybe we’ll put something out.’

“So we had started the process we normally do where myself, Dart, and Riggs get beats sent to us and part of our job is to go through them and pick out the stuff that we like. So, we did that and sent some more stuff over to them and that’s where the Bangladesh, Havoc, and Supa Dups stuff comes from.

It did happen pretty quickly. If you think that they only started toying around in the studio last fall and for them to have a record out by June. I mean we decided to definitely pull the trigger on it in January and February. That’s not a lot of time. We said, ‘Hey let’s get it out for the summer and we still have to get the Slaughterhouse album done and the Yelawolf album done, and 50 is gonna put out his project so we gotta get this out of the way in the first half of the year.’”

Mr. Porter: “Before Slaughterhouse, before Em and Royce even reconnected—our initial idea was, ‘We should get Em on this and it would be crazy.’ But with Em being sober, it was like, how could he approach it? I played it for Em and he was like, ‘Yo, let me sit with this for a minute, I don’t know how I’m going to get back in this space.’

“But Em being the genius that he is, he just jumped back into that character. It was just a lot of trash-talking and jokey fun. It was that Slim Shady thing and I feel like even Royce’s approach was crazy and zany. It’s an emcee thing—we know what you’re going through personally, but sometimes you’re just having fun.

“When I first heard ‘I’m On Everything,’ I was like, ‘Listen, this is rap overload.’ You’ve got to listen to that shit five or six times to get it. The respect level for each other as artists is the kind of respect you want to have when you’re doing a project like this. One person is like, ‘You’re doing that? Well watch this’ or ‘If you’re doing that style then watch this one.’

“I’m pretty sure Em will tell you this himself, if he’s writing a verse, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking like, ‘I bet you this motherfucker’s going to say some crazy shit, so I need to say some even crazier shit.’ The way that they feed off each other is really remarkable. I’m really interested to see how many people pick up on that and and start doing that.”

A Kiss

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“A Kiss”

Produced by: Bangladesh

Royce da 5’9”: “I was on the fence with using this beat at first. Em was like, ‘Lets just take a stab at it.’ Once the vocals got on there the beat went from 10 to 20, for me. I guess it was one of those beats I just needed to hear vocals on. I didn’t dislike the beat. I just felt like if it was going to be a producer of the caliber of Bangladesh, let’s get one of those thumpers that he be giving people, and it ended up being that.”

Eminem: “Yeah. That was one where I felt like we could do some more back and forth shit. I asked Paul on one phone conversation, ‘What do you think the EP is missing if me and Royce go back in and do a couple more joints?’ And he said, ‘Well, there’s some moments on the EP that are dazzling when you guys do the back and forth.’ That kind of stuck with me a little bit and I was like, ‘Why don’t we do some more back and forth shit?’”

“Also, at one point we were talking about putting ‘Echo’ and ‘Living Proof’ on the record, and in a way I felt like the kids that we might reach are hip-hop heads that stay on the Internet and probably already heard those songs because of the leaks.

“They are great records that both of us believed in then, and do still now, but do we want to make the fans feel like they got ripped off? It was like, ‘Why don’t we just go back in and make two new songs, and maybe we’ll use [‘Echo’ and ‘Living Proof’] as bonus tracks or something.’ So we went in and did ‘The Reunion’ at the last minute and ‘A Kiss.’”

Royce da 5’9”: “Plus he got to use the word truculent.”

Eminem: “I like that word, and it fit.”

Royce da 5’9”: “It was one of those thing where I had to ask, ‘What did you say?’ He said it so fast. I was like, ‘What am I going to rhyme with truculent? Thanks again Em.’”

Bangladesh: “[I got involved with the project] through mutual people in the industry that had a couple of beats of mine and I guess they gave them to Em’s people and I heard Em was already looking for some beats from me because of ‘A Mili’ and ‘6 Foot 7 Foot.’ They called me and said that they were fucking with that beat and that Em wants it.

“That ain’t no sample [on the beat], it’s an original. [The girl on the hook is] just a random chick. [Laughs.] It’s nothing that serious. The vocal in the song is really just a sound in the beat. It’s not really about the girl.”

Lighters

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“Lighters” f/ Bruno Mars

Produced by: Eminem, The Smeezingtons, Battle Roy

Royce da 5’9”: “My manager gave me the beat from this kid Battle Roy who’s a producer from Minnesota. So I presented it to Em before I wrote anything to it. He liked the idea. It was one of those ideas that just sat around for a minute, and one day Em was like, ‘You know what? I think I might have an idea for that ‘Lighters’ record you gave me.’”

Eminem: “Yeah, we were doing other shit in between, and that was one that I liked but I wasn’t completely sold on it. I think at that point in time what happened was I had to do some more shit with him, for me personally like, ‘Lets do some more hip-hop, just rhyming shit.’ Because I felt like that one had potential to be a hit, and it was like, ‘We have that, if we want to pull that one out,’ and we went back to doing other things, and I just came back around at, like, the 80% point on some, ‘I might have something for this.’”

Royce da 5’9”: “There was a reference hook on it that the producer wrote that was kind of similar [to the final version], and for some reason I was just hearing Bruno Mars’ voice on it.”

Eminem: “It was Royce’s idea originally to put Bruno on it when the reference hook was there. He was like, ‘Yo what if Bruno did this?’ And I was like, ‘That’d be fucking crazy,’ but I kind of felt like if Bruno got on it, it could be out-of-here, and I wanted to make sure that we got our emcee songs done first. And although neither one of us wanted to compromise anything on the track, knowing where Bruno could take it, we still wanted to keep it gutter, lyrically.

“Bruno's voice is crazy. He’s one of those dudes that’s out right now that’s got so much appeal because of the way he sings and the way he delivers. But long story short, we approached Bruno and asked him if he’d be part of it.”

Paul Rosenberg (Eminem's Manager, and President of Shady Records and CEO of Goliath Artists): “When Em was out in L.A. for the Grammys, Bruno was out there as well and we got them together at Em’s hotel so that Em could play him the song and see if he wanted to get on it.

“They had their parts of the record done and we reached out to him probably at some point before the Grammys and we kept seeing if we could find a time for them to actually get together because they had never met and it’s kind of weird to just do a track with someone you’ve never met.

“It happened over the course of a couple of months. Bruno had to leave town and go to Europe and do some shows, but before he left to go to Europe he sent us what he had come up with. Then while he was gone Marshall took that and married it to what he already had and then sent it back.”

Eminem: “He was down, and he had said that he’d want to switch up the words a little bit and mess around with the melody. So he did and also made a new bridge and added some music. I added some more music and we just kind of put it all together.”

Paul Rosenberg (Eminem's Manager, and President of Shady Records and CEO of Goliath Artists): “There was like three phases to recording this EP. There was the beginning phase with Mr. Porter. There was the next phase where everyone sent in their tracks and there was the later phase where they felt like some of the material was getting old and they just wanted a couple more records.

“The middle phase was where ‘Lighters’ was created. The thing about this project and the reason we made it an EP is nobody wanted it to have this sort of pressure that’s involved with putting out an album. Especially an Eminem album. There’s certain expectations, and all sorts of things that make the creative process different.

“So we felt that making it an EP would allow the guys the freedom to just really do what they wanted to do and make the record that they wanted to make. Because if you put it out as an album and you had all these tracks of this really dense, intricate, complex, aggressive rapping it’s hard to fit that into the radio world.

“So the idea that I think Royce had for the “Lighters” track was, ‘Well let’s see if we can give something that maybe will step away from this and give us a chance to get in some attention away from only our core fan base.’”

Take From Me

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“Take From Me”

Produced by: Mr. Porter

Royce da 5’9”: “I was inspired, conceptually, by the hook that Mr. Porter had on this. When I recorded my verse I really wanted to pitch it to Em myself, because we had started mixing and he was in stressed-out OCD mode. But then I had to leave out of town the next day so Mr. Porter played it for him and Em was just like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool.... But we’re done though. We’re mixing.’ [Laughs.]

“So we traveled somewhere, and I might have just planted the seed. I think I gave him a copy like, ‘Yo man live with this. See what you think.’ After he wasn’t as stressed out anymore, or he was in a more upbeat mood because he had gotten a lot done mixing-wise, he called me a week later and said he might have an idea for it. So he ended up doing his [verse] a little bit later.

“For me the idea of ‘Take From Me’ was really about my personal relationships. People perceive you like you’re definitely making the money that they think you’re making in their minds. They’re never accurate. You’ve always got less than what they probably think you’ve got.

“I went through a time where I felt like I had to loan people money just to be their friend. I was just thinking to myself, ‘That shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be obligated to give you something every time something goes wrong with your baby’s mother, or you get behind on something, because I have a family too.’

“So I kind of had to cut myself off from doing that. And I just felt like talking about it. I had never addressed it in a song. It’s something I’ve been going through for years, ever since day one when I signed to Tommy Boy. I had somebody around me who absolutely felt like I had to take care of him.”

Eminem: “Really? You’re gonna talk about me like I’m not sitting next to you on this couch? Should I even be in this interview? [Laughs.]”

Royce da 5’9”: “Sorry, man. [Laughs.] Right? Imagine that.”

Eminem: “Yeah. I mean, when I heard what he was talking about in those first few lines, when he gave me that track, we had some songs that were leaking. We weren’t sure where it was coming from. My take on it was like, ‘Fuck, man.’ People are going to get music.

Mr. Porter: “That’s my favorite joint on the whole album. This is the first time I was able to bring a concept to the table. I produced it and it’s co-produced by 56, he’s an upcoming producer from Detroit. The song is partially about people who release our music before it’s done and we don’t have an explanation for the fans, but then we have to sit and read their comments on how bad the song is.

“Somebody gets a hold of a song, they put it out, and there you are with an unfinished song. Now who cares? The song comes and goes. We wanted to address that. Some people can take it as, ‘Why are you trying to empower the people that are doing it?’ But nobody has stood up and said anything.

Eminem: “They’re going to download music from here, from there, and with me, my music—it’s never has been and never will be, a money issue. I don’t give a fuck about the money. But when you take shit that is not finished—and not only am I not done with it, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to release it—and put it out there, that shit hurts.

“I’m in the studio all the time experimenting and trying different shit. If I don’t have the freedom to do that—that’s how I make my music, by experimenting. Not every idea that I try and lay on tape works, believe it or not. And then it’s like to be criticized like, ‘This shit is garbage!’ Well it wasn’t even fucking finished! It was late that night, I wasn’t in my...A lot of that material that leaked, by the way, I wasn’t in my right state of mind for. I didn’t put it out there for a reason.”

Royce da 5’9”: “Yeah. We’d like to put the music out on our terms. I mean it’s just that when you put all that into it, you feel a certain way when someone just takes it. And they do it for shits and giggles, but they don’t realize how much time and effort gets put into it.”

Eminem: “If it’s your music you should have the right to present it to the public, if you want to present it to the public at all, how you want to present it to the public. Whatever happens after it’s out, that is what it is.”

Royce da 5’9”: “We don’t want people to think that we don’t appreciate them being that much of a fan of our music to want to take it, want to have it, or to want to get Internet props by saying, ‘I’m the one who spread it.’ We appreciate that. I just don’t think people take into consideration the cons of doing that, or take into consideration our feelings.

“It’s hard to express it without seeming ungrateful for people even being interested in it at the same time. It’s kind of like a double-edged sword. I think the way Em brought it across in his verse was beautiful. Everybody can get another perspective of how to look at it.”

Eminem: “As much as we fuck around, and we joke around, we take our art and our music very seriously. It’s our craft.”

Loud Noises

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“Loud Noises” f/ Slaughterhouse

Produced by: Mr. Porter

Eminem: “I felt like the whole purpose of this EP for me is obviously to show that me and Royce have repaired our relationship, all systems are a go from here on out and everything’s good with that, but at the same time hopefully I can help bring him to a wider audience and get people open to him.

“So it was like, we did that, now here’s the group Royce is in. Check these guys out. It’s more so for me, in my head a launching pad to help Slaughterhouse, too. To get people warmer to them, and show what they can do. I think that this record really fucking showcases what they can all do. I’m excited for the project, so I just wanted that to be the last song. Like, ‘This is the last impression. This is of things to come next.’”

Mr. Porter:Anchorman is one of my favorite movies. Every time I watch that movie, the part where Brick Tamland is standing with all of them in the office with Veronica, they’re all screaming and he’s like, ‘LOUD NOISES!’ That’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I was like, ‘Hmm, let me take that and make a beat out of it.’ All I heard in my head was ‘LOUD NOISES!’ this crazy horn section.

“I didn’t want it to be a regular boom bap kinda beat. Every song has its own life and this one is totally different. It was a challenge cause I wanted to see how they were going to rap to it. It’s got a different time signature, I haven’t heard nobody use it in hip-hop yet. Trying to do live instrumentation with the horn section, that was the first time I had to really sit down with somebody and go through all of that. I’m gonna put the instrumental out so people can get a whiff of how it really came about. I’m putting a video out of me making the beat too.

“We were on the plane when I played it to Em and Royce. We get on a plane and everybody—Em, Royce, Alchemist, myself—is like, ‘Yo, listen to this.’ It’s just a real love for just working and showing off what you’ve been doing. So I played them those joints and as soon as they heard them they were like, ‘Okay, this is it.’ When I’m playing music for Em and Royce and I get the reaction like, ‘Wow, let’s write,’ that makes me feel great. It was their idea to get Slaughterhouse on it.”

Living Proof

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“Living Proof”

Produced by: Mr. Porter

Royce da 5’9”: “That was just a song that I had that I was doing for my album. I always get Em’s opinion on everything that I do. So I ran it by him and he liked it of course.

“Once we realized that we were doing an EP, ‘Living Proof’ was one that he brought back up like, ‘What about that one song where you was talking about?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you’re talking about “Living Proof.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, lemme hear that again.’ I played it for him and he was like, ‘Alright, we gonna work on something, but let me take that home. Then out of nowhere he came like, ‘Yo I’ve got a verse for that.’”

Eminem: “It was just different. I liked the ‘Funky Drummer’ James Brown drum break. I think that was something you gave me to just check out, and then one day going through CDs I think you had left to go somewhere, you were doing a show or something, and I popped the CD in and I listened to the verse again. I was like, ‘Wow, this is fucking dope.’ So I decided to jump on that. I think he had two verses to it.”

Royce da 5’9”: “Yeah, I had two verses.”

Eminem: “So we made your second verse a third verse and reworked it.”

Royce da 5’9”: “Yeah. I cut it in half, and came up with a way to go out of it to kind of pass it to him for the third verse.”

Mr. Porter: “I made that beat when I was watching the BET Cypher and everybody was rapping off ‘The Funky Drummer.’ I chopped up ‘The Funky Drummer’ and souped it like how I do my drums. I actually made it for a cypher. Then Royce got a hold of the beat, but I didn’t know he was doing a song to it.”

“Then one day, he played it. And I was like, ‘Oh, shit, I forgot about this beat.’ That was one of the first songs that they recorded. But the song ended up leaking which gave us the fuel for ‘Take From Me.’

“Royce’s second verse on there is one of my favorite verses that he’s ever spit. I hate him because it’s just like being around Em—just when I think that they’re incredible the way that they are, they do some other shit that makes me go, ‘Wow.’”

Echo

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“Echo” f/ Liz Rodriguez

Produced by: DJ Khalil

Eminem: “I had heard that me and T.I. might do another song together and this was one of the ideas that I’d wanted to present to him. But then he had an idea to present to me and that was what we decided to go with for his album. So then I was going to try to rework it for me and Royce, because I still liked the beat and the hook, but we didn’t get a chance to finish it because it leaked.”

Royce da 5’9”: “‘Echo’ and ‘Living Proof’ leaked, but they were the wrong version of both songs. Those songs finished are actually bonus cuts on the EP. We wanted to make it an EP [and keep it short], but we still wanted people to hear those songs, so we made them bonus cuts because the leaks didn’t do those songs any justice. We at least wanted people to hear them the way they should be heard.”

Paul Rosenberg (Eminem's Manager, and President of Shady Records and CEO of Goliath Artists): “That song was part of that of that batch of songs that Marshall was working on for Recovery and I think it was sent to him during part of that process, but he never recorded a song to it and he went back to it.”

DJ Khalil: “They called me not too long ago for the track ‘Echo’ because I sent it to him with the hook on it with Liz Rodriguez. But then the record got leaked a few months ago and that was my first time even hearing it. I didn’t even know the project existed at that point. I just knew Royce was on it.

“I was just used to it because my songs get leaked so much that I was like, ‘Okay another leak, great.’ [Laughs.] But I have a good relationship with Eminem and his people so they were just like, ‘Don’t worry. We still love the record.’ They still wanted the files so it just ended up working out.

“It’s definitely a stadium-type record, rock-influenced with a big chorus. It’s definitely trying to go for an arena rock sound and I think that that kind of fits what Em does. Recovery was all big records, that’s why it connected and did so well commercially, but it’s still hip-hop. I think he kind of found that bridge of someone that could be big and huge and still be raw hip-hop.”

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