When Eminem was young, he said he was like a “sponge” when he listened to other rappers, absorbing their talent and trying to learn from it. He listened to rap like a student, but he said some artists led to him feeling profoundly discouraged. He shared the album that made him consider quitting rap altogether.
Eminem said one rapper’s talent discouraged him
After Eminem first discovered rap, he spent much of his time listening to it.
“I was a sponge,” he told The New York Times. “I would gravitate towards the compound-syllable rhyming, like the Juice Crew. Lord Finesse, to Kool G Rap, to Big Daddy Kane, to Masta Ace, Redman, Special Ed. I don’t even think I understood why I liked it. I had a couple of friends that had to point out to me how many syllables somebody was rhyming.”
One artist completely changed his life.
“And then Treach from Naughty by Nature came along and he was doing all that, too,” he said. “He was cool, too — his image and everything. I wanted to be him.”
He said that he almost liked the album too much. He thought it was so good that he couldn’t ever compare. It seemed as though he should just give up.
“When the first Naughty by Nature album dropped, that whole summer, I couldn’t write a rap,” he said. “‘I’ll never be that good; I should just quit.’ I was so depressed, but that’s all I played for that summer. Proof thought Treach was the best rapper, too. Every time he would drop an album I would just be, like, Son of a b****.”
Eminem said another rapper put him in a similar slump
Another artist’s debut also astonished Eminem.
“Nas, too. I remember The Source gave Illmatic five mics,” he said. “I already knew I liked Nas from ‘Live at the Barbeque’ with Main Source, because his verse on that is one of the most classic verses in hip-hop of all time. But I was, like, ‘Five mics, though? Let me see what this is.’”
Eminem felt nearly despondent over how good the album sounded.
“And when I put it on, ‘And be prosperous/though we live dangerous/Cops could just arrest me/Blamin’ us/We’re held like hostages.’ He was going in and outside of the rhyme scheme, internal rhymes,” he said. “That album had me in a slump, too. I know the album front to back.”
He got into the genre at a young age
Eminem’s uncle introduced him to rap when he was a child. The moment changed the course of his life.
“My Uncle Ronnie had the Breakin’ soundtrack. I was, like, 11 years old, and he played me Ice-T’s ‘Reckless’ before I’d seen the movie,” he recalled. “Uncle Ronnie used to breakdance and he taught me a little bit, showing me some moves. From that moment I knew there was nothing else — no other kind of music that I would ever like again — aside from rap.”
He began recording the radio while he slept just so he could hear new artists.
“I had a tape player, and I found WJLB. There was this D.J. named the Wizard. He would play from, like, 10 to 11,” he said. “I would just hit record on my tape and I’d go to sleep and get up for school to see what I got: ‘Go See the Doctor,’ Kool Moe Dee, UTFO. I just wanted everything — give me everything that rap has: Run-DMC, Fat Boys, LL. Every time LL dropped something it was, like, he was the best, no one’s touching him. LL Cool J was everything to everybody.”
