Eminem is the latest artist to take to the site Genius and annotate some of their biggest hits. Following the likes of Rick Rubin, The-Dream, and more, Em shared some thoughtful insight on a number of his greatest songs and collaborations and just how they came about. Included are annotations of "My Name Is," "Lose Yourself," "Stan," "In Da Club," "Just Don't Give a Fuck," and many more. We pulled some of the best annotations for you to check out below, while Eminem's entire list of annotations can be found on his Genius page here.
On the final battle in 8 Mile:
This is Rabbit’s battle, not mine. I had a big battle of my own, and it was definitely not like Rabbit’s. We had pressed up “The Slim Shady EP” and it was doing pretty well in Detroit. At some point, Wendy Day called me and said “I want you to be on the battle team. I got you a ticket to the Rap Olympics in LA.”
I went to the Olympics, got all the way to the end, and then lost to the last guy. The guy who won was Otherwize, from LA. It was a local thing. They had a bunch of crowd support there. When I rapped, he went and hid behind a video screen. He walked away while I was rapping. I didn’t have anyone to battle! I’d never been in a situation like that before. I went through a lot of people to get through to the end, and then he walked away while I was rapping. I’m like, “What the fuck do I do?” I was devastated.
I come off stage. I’m like, that’s it. It’s over for me. This kid from Interscope, Dean Geistlinger, walks over and he asks me for a copy of the CD. So I kind of just chuck it at him. It was The Slim Shady EP. We come back to Detroit, I have no fucking home, no idea what I’m gonna do. Then, a couple weeks later, we get a call. Marky Bass said, “Yo, we got a call from a doctor!”
On "My Name Is:"
“My Name Is” was the first song we recorded. We recorded three or four that day, in like six hours. One song was called “Ghost Stories” and one was “When Hell Freezes Over.” I feel like there was one more but I can’t remember what it was. We always have this discussion, because Dre says it’s four.
Paul used to live in New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. He had an apartment he shared with three roommates. I was over, sleeping on the couch. We didn’t have money yet, really. We had already filmed the video, and we saw it for the first time on MTV. It came on really late at night. I was sleeping on the couch when Paul saw it for the first time.
That’s when it was like, “Okay, this isn’t a joke anymore.” We had kind of felt that, being in the studio with Dre and shit. But once that single came out, my life changed like that. Within a day. Just going outside. I couldn’t go outside anymore. In a day. It went from the day before, doing whatever the fuck I wanted to do, because nobody knew who the fuck I was, to holy shit, people are fucking following us. It was crazy. That’s when shit just got really — it was a lot to deal with at once.
Right after the first single came out, I did a signing at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. While I was there, I got served by a court processor. They knew where I’d be, and they had to physically serve me. The guy got tackled. He was stupid. You don't need to physically serve someone anymore, like in the movies. But the guy was being a cowboy. It was some lawsuit from my mother, I think.
Dre put on the Labi Siffre record, and I was just like “Hi! My name is!” That beat was talking to me. I was like, “Yo, this is it, this is my shot. If I don’t impress this guy, I’m going back home and I’m fucked.” I knew Dre wasn’t an easy person to please. I made sure that everything he had a beat for, I had a rhyme ready to go, or I came up with a rhyme on the spot.
“My Name Is” was the first thing that came out of my mouth that first day I was at Dre’s house. I don’t know if we released what I did the first day or if I re-did it, but it was basically the same. I didn’t understand punching, or believe in it. So I would just go from the top of the song all the way down. I was never flying in hooks. Everything was live, one take. If I got all the way to the fucking end, and messed up the last word, I’d be like “Run it back, let’s do it again.” I remember Dre was like “Yo, are you fucking crazy? Let’s just punch.” I didn’t like that concept because I wasn’t used to it. When we were recording here in Detroit, in the beginning, I was saving up my money to go in. We only had an hour, you know? I’m like “One take down, alright, let’s go to the next song. Fuck it.” That’s what I was used to.
On "Renegade:"
When I’m writing, I’m in the syllable game. I’m connecting 5-6-7-8 syllable phrases where every syllable rhymes. I get heavy into that. When I start rapping something, and I think of more syllables that connect with it, sometimes I want to just keep the scheme going forever.
I’ve done it before in songs, where the syllable scheme of the first verse ends up being the syllable scheme of the second verse, and the third verse — all the way down. I do it because the lines start connecting and making sense. Once I find something and lock in, it comes out pretty quick.
On "Lose Yourself:"
When we were making 8 Mile, I was revisiting this old CD from two years before, going through old loops. I found the “Lose Yourself” demo on this session where me and Jeff Bass were just making beats. Jeff was just sitting on those guitar chords, and then it went into something different. I was just like “Yo, that section, right there, I gotta make a beat out of that.” I recorded the demo version of it the same day I made the beat. I didn’t like the rhyme, and put it off to the side.
But it’s one of those beats I never gave up on. That beat was definitely a highlight of my producing. I ended up doing the new version on the set of the movie, just writing between takes.
8 Mile wasn’t coming out for another year and a half, and Curtis really wanted music for the movie. He wanted it to be created from the environment, so he was pushing me to make stuff. I think “Lose Yourself” was the only thing I worked on specifically for the movie.
We filmed half of it in the dead of winter. We had a music trailer on set, designed like a studio. One trailer was music, and we had another with gym equipment in it.
We were on lunch break, and I needed to finish the track. I don’t think it was one take all the way down, but it was one take each verse. “Got the first verse, okay, punch me in at the second. OK, the whole third verse.” For some reason, I just captured something there that I didn’t want to change. I remember trying to change it and go back and re-do the vocals, and I was like “Yo, let me listen to the old ones? Just keep the old ones, fuck it.”
The first verse is all about Jimmy Smith Jr. It’s me talking about Jimmy Smith Jr. — like, I’m not saying my sweater, I’m saying his. I’m trying to show you what his life is about.
Putting the name of the actor right there in the lead single was just about the rhymes. I had started with this syllable scheme — “somebody’s paying the pied piper” and “Mekhi Phifer” ended up fitting. That was all it was.
That was one of those songs where I remember telling Paul, “I don’t know how to write about someone else’s life.” Because the movie is not me, the movie is Jimmy Smith Jr. So I’m playing this character, but I have to make parallels between my life and his, in this song. I gotta figure out how to reach a medium. It would sound so corny if I was *just* rapping as Jimmy Smith Jr. How is that going to come from a real place?
If I’m telling you that my daughter doesn’t have diapers, I need this amount of money to pay my bills this month, and it’s some real shit I’m telling you, then you know that it’s just coming from me. That was the trick I had to figure out — how to make the rhyme sound like him, and then morph into me somehow, so you see the parallels between his struggles and mine.
Maybe people are just thinking father rhymes with daughter or something. But it’s about repeating a pattern. The trick is to get the pattern to hit on the same beat — “grown farther,” “own daughter,” the “knows” and “goes,” like that.
On 50 Cent's "In Da Club:"
We couldn’t decide on the first single from Get Rich. It was going to be either “If I Can’t” or “In Da Club.” We were torn, so me, 50, Paul, Chris Lighty, and Jimmy Iovine decided to flip a coin.
