I samband med att nya singeln “Walk On Water” släpptes i fredags kom även en ny podcast där en av låtens producenter, Rick Rubin, samtalar med författaren Malcolm Gladwell och gäster. Först ut i “Broken Record” blev Eminem pratade om sin återkomst till musikscenen som radikalt förändrats. Låten besriver han kort och koncist:
“It’s a very moral song. It’s mortality, not being Superman and what if I can’t come up with the best shit I wrote every single time?”
Rubin antyder även i episoden att Eminem haft problem med hur den “nya hip hop-vågen” och dess ofta omdebatterade “mumble rap”, då han själv har bakgrunden i en era där textförfattandet stod i ett annat fokus. Rubin sade:
“For him, it’s a little bit of a culture shock because there’s a new wave of Hip Hip that’s not really what he’s about, so he was just talking to me about how that felt. I could see he was frustrated with.”
Eminem berörde därefter vad som inspirerat honom och vad han växte upp på för musik, och lyfte i synnerhet Tupac Shakur:
“I’ve been a student of Hip Hop and I’ve always studied rap, and one of the things I learned from Tupac — I don’t know how — he just always knew the right words to say on the right chords…”
“He was so genius at doing that. He never said the wrong thing on the wrong chord. Listen to ‘Dear Mama.’ Listen to every single thing — every single thought, every single word, every single bar was so in place of where it should be. He was just so smart about picking his beats. 2Pac always said, ‘Feel me.’ You have to feel him, not just hear him.”
Vidare lyfte Eminem en lång rad andra hip hop-legendarer:
“When I first got into to Hip Hop, I started with Ice-T. And N.W.A came out, and Audio Two … Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Masta Ace, the whole Juice Crew, Beastie Boys, 3rd Bass — everything that was good Hip Hop — Treach, Naughty By Nature, the whole Flavor Unit. There’s so many that I learned from and just studied — Biggie and Big L, Poor Righteous Teachers, YZ, Rakim, KRS-One, Wu-Tang, Leaders of the New School, JAY-Z, Nas … Public Enemy. I didn’t say Public Enemy. I meant to say Public Enemy.”
Lyssna nedan!
På scen under MTV EMA 2017 passade Eminem även på att hylla Chuck D och B-Real på scen:
