Eminem's Kamikaze Insights and Reflections

Y'all ready to be history? Alright, hey, there we go. We're out of here. Alright, here we go. That's it. Sway, so before we get started, will you please sign this for me? Oh, shit. Damn. Wow. Wow. Look at how, yo, you look like a kid. You're a kid there. Damn, man. I was a baby, bro. Crazy. I was in my teenage years. Y'all didn't know I had bars once. Once upon a time, huh? Man, you want me to say Marshall? You want me to say? Yes, please. Okay. That's M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L. Yeah, there you go. Look at that, man. I signed a vinyl for him, man. Look at that, man. Incredible. Yo, man, your signature's so much better than mine. Thanks, man. Yeah, no problem, man. Man, you threw me off with that. Fucked up your whole shit? Not really. I'm just impressed that you dug that deep in the crates, man. I didn't know you. I'm always digging in the crates. That's good to know, man. That's good to know. If you want to use any lyrics from any of those songs on that vinyl, bro. I was going to ask you when the cameras are off. There's a couple bars that I wish I could have. Yeah, that's cool, man. Go ahead, man. What's mine is yours, man. If it'll make your shit tighter, you know. Let's speak on bars, though. Here we are. Kamikaze came out. You know, you shocked the world the way you did it. What made you do it? I mean, Revival came out December 2017. That wasn't that long ago. It was less than a year. What made you just drop it on the world the way you did? Because I feel like, I feel like the way the climate is right now, if you give people, if you give people enough time to, I got an album coming out in two months, you give people time to say, Man, he better have a song like this or I ain't fucking with it. If he don't have a song like this, I ain't fucking with it. He better not be rapping like this. He better not be rapping about this or I'm not going to fuck with it. And when you go into an album, you can go into anything with the mindset of this is going to suck. And then even if you kind of don't feel that way, you're already kind of formed your opinion in front of all your friends. And you know what I'm saying? So I feel like I feel like. Giving them no warning was the best thing to do just because it doesn't give people enough time to, you know, when the revival track list came down the pipe. Yeah, I remember that. It was like, overwhelmingly, this shit is going to be trash. Yeah. And. that would be nobody really wanted to be wrong about it yeah they had already formed i'm not saying everybody but a lot of people had already you know formed their opinions so Yeah, that was interesting. Like, Revival really got, ran through the ringers, so to speak, before it even got off the ground. But, you know, this is that day and age. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, how have you adjusted to that? Like, before, which is what I find interesting about you, before you spent your whole career being critiqued and criticized by organizations like LGBTQ community or college campuses or police departments, you know, but hip-hop, always stood by you. So that was, you know, that's where you found your refuge. But now it came from inside of hip hop. You know, how did that affect you? Me sitting back and seeing things that I saw, it was kind of like, I felt like, I felt a bunch of different ways. I felt like, okay, maybe because it doesn't sound like everything else and what most people are doing. Maybe that was what tainted their ear. Because I remember a time in hip hop where you had to be so different from the next person or you were trash. There's a shift somewhere that happened that if it doesn't sound like everything else, then it's trash automatically. Yeah. And I just sat back like, OK, all right. I can take that. It's not like I can't take constructive criticism, but I feel like it kind of went beyond constructive criticism. So I had to go back to it. And look, I have made albums that definitely probably would not be my the top of my list. Encore. OK. Relapse, which I believe Encore's a better album than Relapse. Relapse is something that I looked at in a couple of years, went back to it and cringed at it. I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, I didn't even realize I was doing that many accents. I just started, for whatever reason, I just got into it and was just like, started on this weird serial killer vibe kind of thing. And started wanting to talk crazy and started bending words more. And the only way you can bend them is with this accent, trying to use this one. And a couple years later, you know, in making Recovery and slipping out of that, getting out of the accents and beyond it, made Recovery. Yeah. And I always say that if it wasn't for Relapse, I wouldn't have been able to make Recovery. And if it wasn't for Revival, I wouldn't have been able to make this album. So I'm good with it. It just, you know, some people more than others went a little... A little far with it. A little far with it. I want to get into that, too. And I almost, you know, when I listen to Kamikaze and I hear some people say, man, that's the vintage M we wanted. You know, we wanted Shady back, right? And when I listen to it, man, I have to admit, man, I hear something in you on this album that kind of made me rejoice in the way I've done in the past. I like the fact. that you're not running from the criticism. I like the fact that in this digital age, you're not, you know, cowering and reforming to what people think you should sound like or how people think you should act, and you're calling it out. And I actually like some of these review shows that you see on YouTube, and they take people's music, and they have fun with it. I look at these kids, Em, and I see us when we were young. I see myself when I was younger before YouTube, and we'd go through a G-Rap album, and... Oh, this was dope. That was dope. Far Side album. This was dope. Yeah. They just kind of doing that. Right. And you address them. So you're that in tuned, like in the beginning of the ringer, when you talk about if you critique, critique me, you know, you can make millions. If I critique you, there's nothing I really. Yeah. It gets into the territory where it's like it's like you got. OK, so since the Internet has become what the Internet's become and since YouTube and all that. You've got so many, how can I say this, it's almost like not enough Indians, too many chiefs. So it's like somebody, everybody on the internet and in hip-hop especially, is it seems like either a rapper, a DJ, a writer, a producer does something. has something to do with it. And I love the fact that so many people now have been able to get on easier than it was for me or you back in the day, because we didn't have this platform. So I appreciate the platform. It's just that now you've got people that not only are doing the same thing and they can do it better, but you've got people who don't do anything and are just critiquing it. So I sat back and I'm like, okay, that's fine. People can talk crazy about me. That's fine. They should express themselves and they have a right to. But I also get to say whatever the fuck I want about you now. I'm, like I said, I'm good with revival. Fuck it. Because I couldn't have made this album without that. Yeah. And there is something, I'm not going to lie, there is something. Inside me that is a little more happy when I'm angry. It's like as much as I, as bad as it feels to be there, there's also something about it, there's a rush of it that I like because it inspires me to... Say something back. So you get in that weird area, too, where it's like, oh, he says he doesn't care about what anybody thinks about him. But now he cares about what everybody thinks about him. No, he's just saying he don't care. He'll say anything he wants about you if you say it about him, because he doesn't care. Like there's so many different levels to not caring about shit. You know what I'm saying? But it was interesting. It was definitely interesting because I'm like, how fucking off is my ear? Yeah. Jesus Christ. Like and then and then it was interesting to watch. The reaction, the Chloroceptic remix verse that I did. Yeah, with 2 Chainz, and you put that out in January. You kind of, you touched on, you guys formed your opinion just from a track. That's where I was at. At that point in time, that's definitely where I was at. But I watched people going, oh, why wasn't this on Revival? Honestly, what if I said it was on Revival? You won't know because you didn't listen, probably. Yeah. But I kind of felt like, okay. I guess this is what people might want. Because I'm always stuck in that, what the fuck do people want? Like you were saying, the O.M. is back, and he's too old to be the O.M. He can't do it. Like, no matter what, when I zig, I should have zagged. No matter what, you got half and half every fucking single time. You kind of say that. You allude to it in one of the songs where you said that you set the bar so high that, you know, at this point, you know... everything's considered a failure. Like, you're almost competing with yourself. Yeah. And you touch on it a lot in every song. Well, not every song, but majority of songs you touch on it, I appreciate. But I have to, like, the Joe Budden thing is really interesting because that, along with MGK, of course, is making a lot of noise out there. And it throws a lot of folks off. When Joe first started commenting, he was like, It was mixed reactions. Some people said it was disloyal. Some people said, man, he's entitled to his opinion. I would assume that obviously it got under your skin, considering the relationship you've had with him with Slaughterhouse. Yeah. How do you describe your relationship with Joe Budden? How do you describe your relationship with Joe Budden? I mean, listen, me and Joe Budden aren't, you know... We're not friends like that. We're not like we didn't go to the same fucking high school or something. You know what I'm saying? So I get that part. But when I'm out here flying around to different places and doing interviews and trying to use my platform to pump up Slaughterhouse every chance I get. And you're using your platform to fucking trash me. And I'm one of the things that keeps this ship moving. You know what I'm saying? So you're doing something. You've got a voice in hip hop. So you actually. could be affecting this ship a little bit, you know what I'm saying? Because you don't owe me nothing, but I've never gotten a fucking interview and been like, Joe Button's shit is fucking trash. That last album he put out is fucking trash. So that's kind of the attitude I took to this whole album. Kamikaze is like, all right, what if I give everybody my opinion about them? I want to talk about Slaughterhouse because there's a lot of, including myself, people that really feel like the Slaughterhouse saga was unfinished. You know, I know there's a Glasshouse album that was pretty much completed but never released. Right. Where we had left it about two years ago was everybody came in and. Different, some of the guys in the group picked certain beats, some of the guys didn't feel those beats, so they liked the other beats. And there was like, there was definitely enough songs to put an album out, but for the most part, it wasn't a complete picture because everybody was. wasn't on the same page of what their favorite songs were. So I thought they were gonna go back, go back home, regroup, and try to make a few more songs. I didn't hear anything from that, and at that point I started getting really deep into revival. You know, I was recording every day. So a couple months go by, and from what I understand it to be, what I was told, I didn't hear this firsthand, but Joe said, Slaughterhouse ain't hot right now. We don't have a buzz. We need to put out a mixtape. From that point, everybody started branching out. Royce went and did his album, Prime. Like, everybody started doing their own kind of solo shit. So I thought they were just happy with that. You know what I'm saying? Like they just wanted to maybe work on their own projects for a while. And we would come back and visit this or whatever. When we made the first Slaughterhouse album, the Welcome to Our House. Welcome to Our House. That was another album that I felt like, holy shit, people literally just trashed this. They trashed this album. There was a huge fucking backlash of, oh, man, this ain't what we want to hear. It sounds too polished and all that shit. Like you're not. Listen, you're critiquing these guys who are fucking word. wordsmiths. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, so you're, there's, look, there's a certain type of person that, oh man, I like, I only like the beats. There's a certain type of person that will lean towards lyrics more. There's a certain type of person that will lean towards a voice more. They like better. You know what I'm saying? Like everybody leans towards, towards their own. thing but I was just like holy shit because to me the beats were crazy on that album and only thing I did was added my little touch of like sprinkling music in these tracks and mixing them to try to bring out you know the production a little bit um which I don't even know if I did any actual beats on there on the first album but but all I heard was the backlash that it was too polished. So we said, okay, let's do another album and then you guys do what you want to do with it. Which is kind of, we left the ball in their court kind of thing. So I didn't want to touch it in the sense of like, other than give my opinions on songs, I didn't want to touch it with my production. Because I felt like, what if that is the reason? Yeah. That they didn't sell albums. I don't want to hinder that. You know what I'm saying? So we gave them another album. And next thing I know, I hear Joe talking about who got that money. Who got what money? Uh-huh. Like he did say, I saw a clip that he put up an interview with him and Crooked that he felt like that maybe perhaps like he alluded that you and Paul got majority of the money. But but the album. I hate to say this because I think the guys are super fucking talented, but the album didn't do much to even recoup the first budget. Then we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the second album that never came out. What money didn't you get? I don't know if I made a fucking dime off. slaughterhouse i don't care if i made nothing i believed in them so i you know i wanted them to i wanted them to be huge man i really did i wanted a group that lyrical to fucking just bust through everything you know i'm saying and It definitely hurt my feelings a lot when the album didn't do good, the first album. It was just like, fuck, man. Like when we got CeeLo on the hook of the My Life song, I was like, yo, this might be out of here. What was the meaning behind the line when you said the last hit, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, the last hit you got was with your ex-chick? That was what that was. What's that? That was a tap. Just a tap? It was a tap, but it was also saying that his alleged domestic abuse things or whatever, which I'm not going to get into, but I feel like... I feel like... The reason I had to do that is because, like I said, there's a fine line between saying, you know what, this guy's really been cool to me. He's helped me out. and tried to help out on many occasions. So I'm not going to go in on Untouchable like that. I'm going to say it ain't for me. Not crazy about it. Whatever, whatever. But to be the worst song you've ever heard in your life? Have you listened to your own shit? Do you not listen back? Because if that's the worst fucking song you've ever heard in your life, I don't know. Yeah, this song is interesting. So we'll never see that Glasshouse album, probably, as far as you know. I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. I... I want to just make it clear though that aside from the Joe shit, I think that Slaughterhouse is one of the best rap groups ever to ever happen. But that being said, I wish their first album would have connected to more people than it did. I don't, to this day, I still don't. Me and Paul are like, what the fuck happened? You know what I'm saying? But look, man, everybody's not going to like it. everything you put out all the time. That was a dream team of MCs, though. And I think a lot to what you're saying in regards to why aren't people reacting to these words, Smith, is that's how we came up. And honestly, what people may not realize is that's what really separated hip-hop from R&B, rock and roll, and other genres was our ability to bend words, to create patterns that made it unique to our genre specifically, which it seems like is something that doesn't get any credibility. People don't put a whole, not everybody put a whole lot into that now. They don't give a lot of credence to that, you know, which is probably Slaughterhouse could have been a victim of that, that kind of ideology. You also, in this album... You went in on MGK you guys had a discrepancy He mentioned it in his response song rap devil, you know that Let's call Sway and ask him why I can't get on Shade 405. That was in response, so I seen him on the street once, and I didn't know he couldn't come up to Shade at that time, 405. And I said, man, come on up, man. And then I had to see him again and say, hey, man, I don't know what the shit is, but until that gets cleared up, there's no way I can have you on there. What's the shit with that? What happened? Well, the shit is, just for the record, The thing that was going on that he was saying about my daughter, I didn't even know about that until like literally like a year and a half later. Okay. I wasn't, it just, it never hit my radar. And then one day, you know, you go down the fucking wormhole of YouTube and whatever, right? So I see. Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem's daughter, whatever, right? So, what the fuck? Click on it. Like, yo, why is he... Then he starts doing a press run, basically, about Hailey. I'm like, what the fuck? Yo, my man better chill, right? So that's not why I dissed him. The reason I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that. Okay. The reason that I dissed him is because he got on. First he said, first when he said, I'm the greatest rapper alive since my favorite rapper Bambi from Shea 45 or whatever he said, right? Like I'm trying to hinder his career. I said, well, fuck about your career. You think I actually fucking think about you? You know how many fucking... rappers that are better than you, you're not even in the fucking conversation. I don't care if you fucking blow or if you don't blow. It doesn't matter to me. But then when you get on Tech N9ne's album and you start sending shots and people People start hitting me up. Yo, Machine Gun dissed you. He just dissed you. He dissed you. I'm like, I listen to it. I'm like, did he really diss me, though? I keep listening to it. Y'all just rap. You're not gods. And then somebody sends me a screenshot of his Twitter. And it says, had some shit to get off my chest. You just rap. You're not God. Some shit like that. And I was like. A reference to the Rap Gods song. Yeah. So I'm like, on the song, he said, y'all just rap. You're not gods. And on Twitter, he said, you just rap. You not God. Had some shit to get off my chest. And I'm seeing. And by the way, this was on the heels of the freestyle he had just did about shade 45. It's like, shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Now, now I'm in this fucking weird thing because I'm like, I got to answer this motherfucker. And every time I do that. It makes that person as irrelevant as people say I am in hip-hop, I make them bigger by getting into this thing where I'm like, I want to destroy him, but I also don't want to make him bigger. Do you know what I'm saying? Because now you're a fucking enemy. I'll leave it at that. I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna do at this point right now because I'm still kind of waiting to see what You haven't heard his rap double response. No, I heard it. What do you think of it? It's it's not bad for him T, that's some good lines, isn't it? Did y'all really call Interscope to try to shelve this? Fuck no. I never made a fucking call. Made a call to Diddy, really? I got Diddy's number. Just hit him up. Yo, Diddy, what up? Never happened. It didn't feel like a diss to me. It just felt like pitiful. I'm like, ah, fuck. Nah, I'm feeling bad for something I didn't even have. to do with. So that's how that happened. So he made a reply to my reply. So regardless of what the fuck he wants to say, oh, it was from six years ago. Motherfucker. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Wait. I'm telling you the reason I dissed you now. Yeah. I'm telling you. And... I'm gonna sit back and I'm gonna wait for a second just to see because if people start firing off and I try to answer every fucking body that I dissed, on kamikaze or had words about i'm gonna be going the next five fucking years making this song after this song you know what i'm saying so yeah like you're gonna get hit though jesse reyes is featured on this project young up-and-coming star she's on two songs how did you find jesse reyes um I was coming home, I got home one night from a video shoot actually and she was on TV. It was a Seth Meyers show and she was doing that song Gatekeeper and I was like who the fuck is this? Because her voice to me was so crazy. So I rewound it, and I was like, oh, shit. I got to check her out. So I went down the wormhole of looking up shit. And I was like, yo, I really want to fuck with this chick. Because she, right now, my personal opinion, I think she's going to really blow up. That's my personal opinion. I've seen people. Very talented people not do that, but I think that I would put my money on her, that she will absolutely be huge. But I don't even know if like necessarily in the pop world or anything like that. I don't feel like she does pop music. I feel like she she just she comes from a real place and she writes her own shit. First time I got in the studio with her, I played her a couple of beats and she just started writing to one right there. Later hook. Good guy. I was like, oh, shit. So she wrote. She's quick. To Good Guy. To Good Guy. Yeah. The one she's singing at the end? Yeah. There's Nice Guy, Good Guy. Good Guy. And the reason that that happened is because, oddly enough, she had already had a song called Nice Guy. She had that song, right? So I think that was the last day I was in LA. I came back home and wrote to that one. And then I was like, I want to write to the other one too, but they're both saying... Nice guy, good guy. And I was like, fuck it, I'll make it like it's kind of one song. Dre's all over this project? Dre's input is all over it. For sure. He felt like me and him had a couple discussions about the last album. And one of the things that he said to me was, he was like, he hit me up one day, he was like, yo, I don't like how motherfuckers are talking about your album. And he had heard Revival, right? Yeah. Him and Jimmy Iovine had sat in there and listened to most of the songs I had done at Rick Rubin's studio. And based off that reaction, I think Dre was a little confused, too, when that happened with Revival. Probably not more so than me, but we had a conversation. earlier in the year and I think I had only had one song by that time it this was like January yeah I had the one song and was thinking about releasing it and then another song got when I got back to Detroit recorded it like okay now I got two songs I might as well do a fucking album and that's kind of how that came about but Dre also there's a couple songs that He kind of deaded him just because he didn't have a good reaction to him and he also felt like one of them's going a little far. What does that mean? Like how far did it go? It went, it definitely went too far. When you say go too far, I feel like Kamikaze was the place where if you were ever going to go, so-called too far, this is where it would be. You did the BET verse for the rap cypher. And in it, you covered a lot of content that was relevant to the world we live in today that some folks want to sweep under the rug. And this is my own personal opinion. Conversations we have every day on Shade 405 on Sway in the Morning. We talk about, you know, the injustice, policies, prejudice. We talk about discrimination, all of these different things. Rather not, we're in the middle of a race war that is trying to be perpetrated by people in power. Not a war in the sense where people are going to pick up guns and shoot at, well, maybe, shit. Right. But in terms of psychologically, the whole nine. So when you did that verse on the BET cipher, what I thought why it was necessary, King Crooked had a song called I Can't Breathe, where he talks about, man, we can't just be the only ones saying this. White rappers shouldn't stay quiet. White rappers shouldn't stay quiet. I can't tell you how hard that line hit me. It was to the point where I'm like, this is how strong I feel about something. I got to put it in the right words, you know. And I saw shit where it was like, oh, these are not new subjects. They're new to Eminem and, you know, that kind of shit. How did you respond to that reaction? You got backlash for that, you know. I got backlash for the Trump cipher And you know it is what it is At least when this shit Is all said and done Maybe I can just be on the right Side of history but You got people dissecting the bars And going oh this shit is trash It's not even that good That's not what it's about You're missing the whole point I'm trying to like I'm trying to say this also to You My fan base who might have voted for him. A lot of people in my fan base probably did. And at the time I did the cipher, I realized after it was all said and done that maybe, maybe I should have just attacked him. When you said, I drew, you drew that line in a sand, maybe you should have not done that. You should have reworded it and showed empathy. Well, that's what I realized after I was done. That's kind of how I felt because it's like, okay, this is, this is like. This is backfiring on me and I don't care. I don't give a fuck if that's what happened and hurt my sales. I don't care about that. I care about the message I'm trying to convey. Why you felt a need to stand up, though? What was that for you as Marshall? What made you? Because I was just watching it every single day. I watch a lot of news, right? The thing that pissed me off the most, that really set me off when I started going crazy with the pen, because I'm like... the Kaepernick thing. And when that shit happened and how he kept changing the narrative and kept changing the narrative. You fucking, ah, I can't, I can't, um, I don't want to get into this whole Trump thing anymore. Well, you mentioned at the end of the ringer, Asian Orange sending a secret service to your house. Did the secret service really come to your house after that? They came to my studio, yeah. Okay. And they asked, they had, they were just basically asking me questions about my lyrics to see if... what the intent was behind them and if I was making a actual threat or just expressing myself. So that really happened. Wow, that's crazy. Right now what we're seeing too, because Colin Kaepernick was named the face of Nike's 30th anniversary of Just Do It. You saw that, right? And then you got a whole slew of people that are now burning Nike shoes and Nike products. I saw that. It's infuriating. Yeah. What do you think? Infuriating. Yeah. Like really? The-the-Nike supports people who kneel for the anthem at this fucking point. Come on. Seriously? Seriously? You gotta be a fucking moron to think that that's just what it's about and it's that fucking cut and dry. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's a meaning behind this shit and there's real pain behind this shit. And you're burning a fucking pair of shoes? When you go about your fucking day and you got your job and you're doing thinking about all this other shit That's what really fucking bothers you people ain't gonna stop watching football. They're just not yeah football to me is the best sport there is and What draws you to the game? Should not be if that's how you feel about your country and you feel like you should stand for the anthem, stand for the anthem. That's fine. But you also need to realize that this is America and people have died for these rights to be able to protest and to be able to take a knee. Stop making it fucking personal about yourself. You have nothing to do with this. I agree. We got to get back to Tyler, the creator, man. I'm a I'm a I'm a big fan of Tyler's, you know, and I recently saw him perform. I know that Tyler was a big fan of yours growing up. Right. And then I recall you even reading about you saying. some good things about iFuture, how they're pushing boundaries years ago. Yeah, for sure. And you said some great things about them as a talent, as pushing boundaries as a group, iFuture as a whole. Yeah. What happened with you guys? Yeah, no, I really did like them. I thought, like... I thought their movement was really cool too. Did y'all make music? We didn't make music, but you know, I just felt like, okay, there's a mutual respect, you know. And a lot of the shit that ended up happening after that, like the tweet he put out with talking about Shady 15 and why can't people that are close to him tell him that his shit sucks and it's trash and... Like, okay, listen, man. You don't have to like it. And it could really suck. But being that somebody really was cool to you, you would expect some kind of reciprocation. And just don't go public with it and publicly express your opinion and how much my shit is trash. Okay, so I chalk it up to them being young and just kids. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, all right, I've been there. You know what I'm saying? Like, I was a dick when I first came out. You know what I'm saying? Uh... Yeah, man. You were. I know. Yeah. I feel bad about it. I'm sorry if I ever was a dick to you. But I don't think I ever was. Was I? Yeah, one time, man. But hey, hey. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's true. We'll talk about that. Okay. Um... Nah, man. So I liked him. And then Earl Sweatshirt gets in an interview after Tyler trashes me. And then Earl Sweatshirt, anybody who listens to Eminem is drinking too much Mountain Dew. And... And I'm just like, really? Like what the fuck? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like you guys were just on tour with us. We hung out, like we, we kicked it, made jokes. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, so the last straw, like, look, I know a lot of this shit. I could, I, I could come across being very petty. Yeah. But at a certain point in time. Someone has their breaking point, you know what I'm saying? So, when Tyler tweeted out the thing about Walk on Water, this fucking song is horrible, I was like, alright. I need to say something now, because this is fucking... It's stupid. You know? But at the same time, I'm not gonna let everybody just keep fucking, I'm not gonna be America's punching bag and motherfuckers just wanna think it's cool and safe to say whatever the fuck they want about me. I think it shocks people, you know, because Because for all your career, you was the, I just don't give a fuck guy. That can work both ways. How so? Because you don't give a fuck, you will fire back at somebody who says something about you. I picked and chose who to, that I wanted to say my piece with. Yeah. Because a lot of those things were personal. But then there's a lot of things that aren't personal in Kamikaze. You know, it's just the game and competition. You know what I'm saying? Spirit of an MC. Spirit of an MC, yeah. But, you know, with the Tyler, the Creator thing, man, I realize now. And I realize when I said it, but I wasn't like... in the mind frame of... I was angry when I said this shit about Tyler. The fact of like, every time I saw this kid, like, oh, he's so cool to you. You know what I'm saying? Like, I loved his energy, like everything. You know what I'm saying? Like, he was a funny dude. Like, he's super charismatic and shit. But I'm sitting back like, man, at what point, at what point do I have to say something? Just to defend myself and I think that the word that I called him on the album was on that song was one of the things where I felt like This might be too far because in my in my the homophobic in my quest yeah in my quest to hurt him I realized that I was hurting a lot of other people by saying it and at the time I was so mad it was just whatever but in the midst of everything else that was going on on this album the things that it took to pull this album together and all that kind of shit. It was one of the things that I kept going back to going, I don't feel right with this. Before the album came out, I had the conversation with Paul and we spun the word back. But now I realize people can hear what I'm saying anyways. In the case of this, man, I feel like just, man, I wish you and Tyler could sit down and hash that one out. Now that you fired your shot back and he said what he said, because I think that's a special young man. And he could probably use your mentorship and you could probably feed off of what he has to offer as well. I could tell it was different from Joe or some of the other. Yeah, it's definitely different. It's not it's not it is. It's not as personal. It's one of them things like, all right, dude, you deserve a tap now because I think you thought it was cool to just, because you slid with the other things and I didn't say shit because like I said, I was chalking it up to them being young and just kids, man. I'm like, but at the same time, at what point do I just got to keep taking it? I'm going to switch topics because something I see, I keep hearing this reoccurring theme about how important writing is. One of my favorite things. Tracks on the album is featuring an up-and-coming star that I think he, along with others that you mentioned on the album, like Sean or Kendrick or J. Cole. Yeah, Joyner Lucas. Powerful, real powerful artist. I like y'all together on this track. You know, I think it's a good mesh between a veteran and somebody who's on the rise. He's so good, too. What is it about him that you like? The first time I saw him was like five years ago at one of the BET Cyphers. And I peeped out, he was like, he was saying a lot of lines that I saw some of me in that. But at the same time, it was different because it was like, early on in my career, whenever I get to do a BET Cypher, I want to try to, I want to write till my shit stands out. You know what I'm saying? And he stood out so much to me. I was like, yo, he was talking about Miley Cyrus and if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure it was something like that. But he was talking about pop stars and he was doing this kind of thing. But I'm like, yo, people are going to remember that. I remembered it. And then I kind of started when he made the Ross Capucione. Yeah. The way he did it from the two perspectives, it was genius and it was like, stood out. It stood out so much to me. Not only that though, like the rhymes. Like I'm listening to the rhymes. When I'm listening to a rapper, I'm listening to what you're bringing to the table as far as a skill set, right? That's the first thing I'm honing on. But the fact that, like I said, he's not compromising bars to tell his story. He's still got... complexity in there. You know what I'm saying? But he's, the water ride went, like he's taking you on this journey. And I never snapped out of that journey until it was over. You know what I'm saying? And I was like, yo, this kid is fucking incredible. Y'all got a, and I'm paraphrasing, I can't remember the lyrics exactly, but you come in with a verse where you say, I got a couple of mansions, but I still don't have any manners. You got a couple of goat riders, but to these kids, it don't actually matter. What the fuck happened to hip-hop? What's going on with hip-hop? People took that line and thought you were indirectly talking about Drake. No, see, here's the thing. I saw that too. Yeah. Drake is always gonna be in my good graces because he did something for one of my daughters that I will never forget, and he will always be in my graces with that. And I like Drake. What I'm telling you with these lines... is I don't know what's real and what's not at this point. You know what I'm saying? Because you hear shit about this rapper, that rapper, whatever. I'm telling you that I don't do it, never have, and never will. If I ever need a ghostwriter, I need to just fucking put the mic down. You know what I'm saying? So that's my personal belief. As far as anybody out here that does use ghostwriters, I don't know what I'm saying. That's fine. If that's what you do, that's fine. But I'm telling you, I don't do it. Hip-hop was the most important thing that empowered me as a kid. It made me feel... I have a line where I say it made me feel tough when I wasn't. When I was a scrawny little kid, growing up on 8 Mile, walking up the fucking block, put headphones on, and it made me feel powerful. Hip-hop probably was I I mean it was it was it was like my dad Hip-hop, you know I'm saying and it was the only thing that made me empowered It made me feel good about myself and when I started being able to write rhymes and figured out I could do it That's where the feeling comes from to me because The excitement is being able to come up with the shit. You know I'm saying It taught me how to throw my first punch gave me the confidence. Okay, be able to throw my first punch and to realize realized not only that, the fact that Proof used to beat my ass all the time in the backyard boxing. And one time he beat me like literally to the fucking ground. And he was just like, Em, just stop. Because I kept getting up, coming at him. But I'm like, but I just kept getting beat up. He was fast, man. He's very quick. And but it made me realize like, OK, taking a punch is nothing. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not. Your fear when you're a kid is like, oh, my God, if I get hit, what's it going to, what if they hit me in the nose and it jams my nose and my brain and I die? Like, kind of shit you think about. But, nah, man, hip hop, hip hop, like, since its beginning, I was always under the impression that every rapper wrote their rhymes. And when you heard about. Kumo D battling Busy B. It was who's bringing the best rhymes to the table. You know what I'm saying? Who's going to be able to say the best shit? Who's the cleverest and the wittiest? And then years later, fast forward, you hear Eazy-E saying Ice Cube writes the rhymes that I say. And I remember being a kid, like hearing the line, but it never really... I just didn't really care. You know what I'm saying? It didn't really affect the way I felt about Eazy-E or the way I felt about NWA. I think in all fairness, though, I think Drake... as a superior writer to be able to sustain the level of success he has. Yeah, I mean, he makes great music. There's not really even much you can say about it, you know. On this Kamikaze album, I feel like I was pretty direct at who I was kind of taking shots at and going at and who I wasn't, you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't send subliminals to Drake for, there'd be no reason for me to do that. But I am expressing to you that regardless of what any of these other dudes do, I have never, not even a line, not even anything. I wouldn't be able to have fun with it if I couldn't write it. It makes sense. You go in really hard about the Grammys in a way. Man, you kind of, you drag the Grammys in the mud when you talk about you have a few Grammys, but you feel like you had to sell your soul to get them. And you didn't know if you wanted it for the recognition or the trophies, but then what's the difference? You know, and that Grammys pretty much suck the blood of artists and nominate them, have them come to the shows. Which they do. They do it every fucking year. Yeah. And I got I'm just tired of seeing it. And for whatever reason, it's like they're always pitching this hint that you might win album of the year, which is a. used to be a big deal. I don't think it's a big deal now. Um, you know, sat at home this year for the Grammys and watched Jay and Kendrick not get it. And I felt like one of them should have got it. I felt like Joyner Lucas should have won a Grammy for I'm not racist. Yeah. Absolutely should have won a fucking Grammy every year. We, we, we went, it was, I would be up for album of the year. And then The winner is Norah Jones. Who? And I don't, I'm not even trying to say anything bad about her music. I just, at that point, I had never heard of her. Yeah. And none of my friends did either. You know what I'm saying? So we, okay, whatever. And then Steely Dan. Okay, I know who Steely Dan is. I know Steely Dan back in the day. You know what I'm saying? But more than the Marshall Mathers LP impact? Like, okay, fine. I watched 50. Same shit. 50 did not win Best New Artist at the Grammys. There was nothing bigger than 50. Nothing bigger and nobody since maybe like Snoop came out the gate like that. My first album didn't do it. I never saw someone's first album and the wave happen like he had. And then he doesn't get it. And then I get up there another year and what was it, the Eminem show? And it was like, what? I'm fine if I lose to fucking Kanye or someone that I'm like, OK, I respect that. I know who that is. And Kanye has a huge following. He's made a massive impact on music. Fine, I'm good with that. But don't fucking get us all here to use your selling point for your fucking show and stiff everybody every single fucking time. And I said, after that point in time, I was like, don't ever ask me to fucking come here again. Please do not ask me. My answer is no for a hundred million years. Never again will I fucking go to the Grammys. Well, now, you know, I know that Jimmy Jam and some of the members of the board there are reaching out, just Blaze and different folks are now trying to. Make it better. Would you ever consider, you know, joining the board and maybe you have a vote in it? First of all, that vote is fake as fuck. That's not a real vote. That's not a real vote. They give it to who they want to give it to. They give it to their darlings. The fucking, oh, this got critical acclaim, but it sold two records. Like, it ain't about always what you sell. I get that. Vanilla Ice. I understand. You know what I'm saying? Like, but. There comes a point where when an overwhelming something comes along that has this wave and impact on music and you give it to fucking Lotta fuckin'Dottie Who? Lotta Dottie! It's only Lotta Dottie But you know what I'm saying, like it's like Man, I don't know who won over Kendrick and Jay Bruno Mars is fucking incredible. Bruno Mars is great. But I remember Beyonce didn't win for the album Lemonade. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, what the hell? You know, it's like they're so fucking tone deaf to what. is actually going on but they're not in a sense of oh we're gonna get beyonce here we're gonna get jay here we're gonna get we can say all these names are gonna be here and we'll make them i guarantee you i guarantee you that the people from the grammys was on the phone with beyonce's people or jay-z's people saying every year that they're up for something hinting they're gonna win to get them to come there so you're over there i guarantee you over there um I guess I won't see you at the Grammys this year. Yeah, probably not. Probably not? Okay. What if you're nominated? First of all, I won't be. Okay. Because they know that I don't like them. And if I was, I wouldn't win because they know that I don't like them. One final question. I want to ask you about a song that, to me, man, it was probably one of the most heart-wrenching songs on the project was Stepping Stone. You know, and you tell a history. of D12, how it started, you know, and what happened through the duration. And at the end of it, you said it's over. That's it. Were the members aware of that song? They were. They were? They were. They got a heads up and... You know, I explained. I honestly, I have not talked to Swift and Canaver yet about the song. They just knew it was coming down the pipe. But the way I explain it is this. Proof was the glue. that binded us all together, right? He did so much shit behind the scenes that I didn't even realize and did things to keep us a group and to motivate us. Mention that you guys knew all this stuff was happening. but y'all never talked about it. You know, you were men. You know, I'm paraphrasing in the verses, but everybody was doing their solo projects, and, you know, y'all was drifting further apart. Well, that's what ended up happening, was everybody was kind of doing their solo things, made solo projects, mixtapes, and things like that, and were doing shows, and I think the conversation now going forward is to... See if there's anything we can do to help their solo careers. You know, and we'll always be friends, man. We've always been friends since we were kids. You know what I'm saying? So we'll always be good on that aspect, you know. And I want to help them do whatever it is that their next thing is on the agenda. You know what I'm saying? Mixtape, album, shopping, whatever it is. When I listen to these stories, and I've known you since the 90s and I've known you through these ups and downs and even if I wasn't there on your side, I was there on your team, so to speak, you know. Absolutely. I've been thinking, man, this man must have went through some great therapy because right now... Now, where you at, you seem like you're in a comfortable place. You know who you are. You know what you want. And even though you got these people coming at you, you're strong enough to respond in a way that you wouldn't naturally do it. How did you get to this place, though? Did you do therapy? Was it? No, I just, my music is therapy, you know. So I just, I don't know, man. I've been coasting through, and I feel like I just, I always, I write all the time, whether I use it or not, you know, I write all the time. And that's my best therapy is to be able to get stuff out. Just like the D12 song. It was like one of those things where like, I know that they have things they want to say to me and I have things I want to say to them. So this is kind of how I wanted to tell them, like, you know, I love you guys like forever. Like I'm here. It just, doing a D12 album just doesn't seem. In this climate right now? Yeah. I don't know how that would even work. You know what I'm saying? You're going through enough with this climate. Right. So, imagine D12. Let me ask you this, moving forward, this will be my final... Final question. You have always to the public seem like an elusive, introverted person that they don't always have access to. I think that's hilarious. OK, by the way, you know, I'm not going to fucking clubs. anymore i don't do that you know i'm saying i'm sober i don't but i do a lot more and go a lot more places than people actually think i do i just do it under the radar man that's all we don't you know in detroit we don't have paparazzi like la or new york you know i'm saying so i'm out a lot it's just that people don't really see me so you out and about yeah that's interesting to know like i said you're not going to catch me at a club fucking throwing money or You know what I'm saying? Like, I've been through all those days and all that shit. Like, as far as, you know, I've done the whole club scene. Yeah. I did it for a long time. Too long. Nah, but Em, congratulations, man. I like the Kamikaze project. Thank you, man. I think the majority of folks who listen to it cannot deny that you're an elite group of lyricists. Thank you. And I'm a dude who's been in this for multiple decades, and you're at the top of my list. Thank you, man. Thank you. And I like to see you keep it up. keep flying forward regardless of the you know whatever the critics have to say they've been they've been you've had critics since your first album you know so that that's what it's gonna be but i think people can appreciate the fact that you fire back that you ain't gonna stand for it um and that you still are making you're still making great music so congratulations brother absolutely thank you man and listen i'm glad i could sign that vinyl for you man oh yeah you know if you want to i like i said i'm gonna take it home check out some bars okay Okay, here let me see that, show that to the camera. You see that? Swaying Tech, shout out to King Tech. This my brother, partner in crime since high school, since day one, still Swaying Tech, live forever. Shave 45, Monday nights, make sure you tune in, okay? Shave 45! Shave 45, damn it!

Y'all ready to be history? Alright, hey, there we go. We're out of here. Alright, here we go. That's it.

Sway, so before we get started, will you please sign this for me? Oh, shit. Damn. Wow.

Wow. Look at how, yo, you look like a kid. You're a kid there. Damn, man. I was a baby, bro.

Crazy. I was in my teenage years. Y'all didn't know I had bars once. Once upon a time, huh? Man, you want me to say Marshall?

You want me to say? Yes, please. Okay. That's M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L. Yeah, there you go.

Look at that, man. I signed a vinyl for him, man. Look at that, man.

Incredible. Yo, man, your signature's so much better than mine. Thanks, man.

Yeah, no problem, man. Man, you threw me off with that. Fucked up your whole shit? Not really. I'm just impressed that you dug that deep in the crates, man.

I didn't know you. I'm always digging in the crates. That's good to know, man.

That's good to know. If you want to use any lyrics from any of those songs on that vinyl, bro. I was going to ask you when the cameras are off. There's a couple bars that I wish I could have.

Yeah, that's cool, man. Go ahead, man. What's mine is yours, man.

If it'll make your shit tighter, you know. Let's speak on bars, though. Here we are. Kamikaze came out. You know, you shocked the world the way you did it.

What made you do it? I mean, Revival came out December 2017. That wasn't that long ago. It was less than a year. What made you just drop it on the world the way you did?

Because I feel like, I feel like the way the climate is right now, if you give people, if you give people enough time to, I got an album coming out in two months, you give people time to say, Man, he better have a song like this or I ain't fucking with it. If he don't have a song like this, I ain't fucking with it. He better not be rapping like this.

He better not be rapping about this or I'm not going to fuck with it. And when you go into an album, you can go into anything with the mindset of this is going to suck. And then even if you kind of don't feel that way, you're already kind of formed your opinion in front of all your friends.

And you know what I'm saying? So I feel like I feel like. Giving them no warning was the best thing to do just because it doesn't give people enough time to, you know, when the revival track list came down the pipe.

Yeah, I remember that. It was like, overwhelmingly, this shit is going to be trash. Yeah. And. that would be nobody really wanted to be wrong about it yeah they had already formed i'm not saying everybody but a lot of people had already you know formed their opinions so Yeah, that was interesting.

Like, Revival really got, ran through the ringers, so to speak, before it even got off the ground. But, you know, this is that day and age. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, how have you adjusted to that? Like, before, which is what I find interesting about you, before you spent your whole career being critiqued and criticized by organizations like LGBTQ community or college campuses or police departments, you know, but hip-hop, always stood by you. So that was, you know, that's where you found your refuge.

But now it came from inside of hip hop. You know, how did that affect you? Me sitting back and seeing things that I saw, it was kind of like, I felt like, I felt a bunch of different ways.

I felt like, okay, maybe because it doesn't sound like everything else and what most people are doing. Maybe that was what tainted their ear. Because I remember a time in hip hop where you had to be so different from the next person or you were trash. There's a shift somewhere that happened that if it doesn't sound like everything else, then it's trash automatically. Yeah.

And I just sat back like, OK, all right. I can take that. It's not like I can't take constructive criticism, but I feel like it kind of went beyond constructive criticism.

So I had to go back to it. And look, I have made albums that definitely probably would not be my the top of my list. Encore. OK. Relapse, which I believe Encore's a better album than Relapse.

Relapse is something that I looked at in a couple of years, went back to it and cringed at it. I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, I didn't even realize I was doing that many accents. I just started, for whatever reason, I just got into it and was just like, started on this weird serial killer vibe kind of thing. And started wanting to talk crazy and started bending words more. And the only way you can bend them is with this accent, trying to use this one.

And a couple years later, you know, in making Recovery and slipping out of that, getting out of the accents and beyond it, made Recovery. Yeah. And I always say that if it wasn't for Relapse, I wouldn't have been able to make Recovery. And if it wasn't for Revival, I wouldn't have been able to make this album. So I'm good with it.

It just, you know, some people more than others went a little... A little far with it. A little far with it. I want to get into that, too. And I almost, you know, when I listen to Kamikaze and I hear some people say, man, that's the vintage M we wanted.

You know, we wanted Shady back, right? And when I listen to it, man, I have to admit, man, I hear something in you on this album that kind of made me rejoice in the way I've done in the past. I like the fact. that you're not running from the criticism. I like the fact that in this digital age, you're not, you know, cowering and reforming to what people think you should sound like or how people think you should act, and you're calling it out.

And I actually like some of these review shows that you see on YouTube, and they take people's music, and they have fun with it. I look at these kids, Em, and I see us when we were young. I see myself when I was younger before YouTube, and we'd go through a G-Rap album, and...

Oh, this was dope. That was dope. Far Side album. This was dope.

Yeah. They just kind of doing that. Right.

And you address them. So you're that in tuned, like in the beginning of the ringer, when you talk about if you critique, critique me, you know, you can make millions. If I critique you, there's nothing I really.

Yeah. It gets into the territory where it's like it's like you got. OK, so since the Internet has become what the Internet's become and since YouTube and all that. You've got so many, how can I say this, it's almost like not enough Indians, too many chiefs.

So it's like somebody, everybody on the internet and in hip-hop especially, is it seems like either a rapper, a DJ, a writer, a producer does something. has something to do with it. And I love the fact that so many people now have been able to get on easier than it was for me or you back in the day, because we didn't have this platform.

So I appreciate the platform. It's just that now you've got people that not only are doing the same thing and they can do it better, but you've got people who don't do anything and are just critiquing it. So I sat back and I'm like, okay, that's fine. People can talk crazy about me. That's fine.

They should express themselves and they have a right to. But I also get to say whatever the fuck I want about you now. I'm, like I said, I'm good with revival. Fuck it. Because I couldn't have made this album without that.

Yeah. And there is something, I'm not going to lie, there is something. Inside me that is a little more happy when I'm angry. It's like as much as I, as bad as it feels to be there, there's also something about it, there's a rush of it that I like because it inspires me to...

Say something back. So you get in that weird area, too, where it's like, oh, he says he doesn't care about what anybody thinks about him. But now he cares about what everybody thinks about him.

No, he's just saying he don't care. He'll say anything he wants about you if you say it about him, because he doesn't care. Like there's so many different levels to not caring about shit. You know what I'm saying?

But it was interesting. It was definitely interesting because I'm like, how fucking off is my ear? Yeah.

Jesus Christ. Like and then and then it was interesting to watch. The reaction, the Chloroceptic remix verse that I did. Yeah, with 2 Chainz, and you put that out in January. You kind of, you touched on, you guys formed your opinion just from a track.

That's where I was at. At that point in time, that's definitely where I was at. But I watched people going, oh, why wasn't this on Revival?

Honestly, what if I said it was on Revival? You won't know because you didn't listen, probably. Yeah.

But I kind of felt like, okay. I guess this is what people might want. Because I'm always stuck in that, what the fuck do people want?

Like you were saying, the O.M. is back, and he's too old to be the O.M. He can't do it. Like, no matter what, when I zig, I should have zagged. No matter what, you got half and half every fucking single time.

You kind of say that. You allude to it in one of the songs where you said that you set the bar so high that, you know, at this point, you know... everything's considered a failure. Like, you're almost competing with yourself.

Yeah. And you touch on it a lot in every song. Well, not every song, but majority of songs you touch on it, I appreciate. But I have to, like, the Joe Budden thing is really interesting because that, along with MGK, of course, is making a lot of noise out there.

And it throws a lot of folks off. When Joe first started commenting, he was like, It was mixed reactions. Some people said it was disloyal.

Some people said, man, he's entitled to his opinion. I would assume that obviously it got under your skin, considering the relationship you've had with him with Slaughterhouse. Yeah.

How do you describe your relationship with Joe Budden? How do you describe your relationship with Joe Budden? I mean, listen, me and Joe Budden aren't, you know...

We're not friends like that. We're not like we didn't go to the same fucking high school or something. You know what I'm saying? So I get that part. But when I'm out here flying around to different places and doing interviews and trying to use my platform to pump up Slaughterhouse every chance I get.

And you're using your platform to fucking trash me. And I'm one of the things that keeps this ship moving. You know what I'm saying?

So you're doing something. You've got a voice in hip hop. So you actually. could be affecting this ship a little bit, you know what I'm saying? Because you don't owe me nothing, but I've never gotten a fucking interview and been like, Joe Button's shit is fucking trash.

That last album he put out is fucking trash. So that's kind of the attitude I took to this whole album. Kamikaze is like, all right, what if I give everybody my opinion about them? I want to talk about Slaughterhouse because there's a lot of, including myself, people that really feel like the Slaughterhouse saga was unfinished. You know, I know there's a Glasshouse album that was pretty much completed but never released.

Right. Where we had left it about two years ago was everybody came in and. Different, some of the guys in the group picked certain beats, some of the guys didn't feel those beats, so they liked the other beats.

And there was like, there was definitely enough songs to put an album out, but for the most part, it wasn't a complete picture because everybody was. wasn't on the same page of what their favorite songs were. So I thought they were gonna go back, go back home, regroup, and try to make a few more songs.

I didn't hear anything from that, and at that point I started getting really deep into revival. You know, I was recording every day. So a couple months go by, and from what I understand it to be, what I was told, I didn't hear this firsthand, but Joe said, Slaughterhouse ain't hot right now. We don't have a buzz. We need to put out a mixtape.

From that point, everybody started branching out. Royce went and did his album, Prime. Like, everybody started doing their own kind of solo shit. So I thought they were just happy with that.

You know what I'm saying? Like they just wanted to maybe work on their own projects for a while. And we would come back and visit this or whatever. When we made the first Slaughterhouse album, the Welcome to Our House. Welcome to Our House.

That was another album that I felt like, holy shit, people literally just trashed this. They trashed this album. There was a huge fucking backlash of, oh, man, this ain't what we want to hear. It sounds too polished and all that shit.

Like you're not. Listen, you're critiquing these guys who are fucking word. wordsmiths.

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, so you're, there's, look, there's a certain type of person that, oh man, I like, I only like the beats. There's a certain type of person that will lean towards lyrics more.

There's a certain type of person that will lean towards a voice more. They like better. You know what I'm saying? Like everybody leans towards, towards their own.

thing but I was just like holy shit because to me the beats were crazy on that album and only thing I did was added my little touch of like sprinkling music in these tracks and mixing them to try to bring out you know the production a little bit um which I don't even know if I did any actual beats on there on the first album but but all I heard was the backlash that it was too polished. So we said, okay, let's do another album and then you guys do what you want to do with it. Which is kind of, we left the ball in their court kind of thing. So I didn't want to touch it in the sense of like, other than give my opinions on songs, I didn't want to touch it with my production.

Because I felt like, what if that is the reason? Yeah. That they didn't sell albums.

I don't want to hinder that. You know what I'm saying? So we gave them another album. And next thing I know, I hear Joe talking about who got that money.

Who got what money? Uh-huh. Like he did say, I saw a clip that he put up an interview with him and Crooked that he felt like that maybe perhaps like he alluded that you and Paul got majority of the money. But but the album.

I hate to say this because I think the guys are super fucking talented, but the album didn't do much to even recoup the first budget. Then we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the second album that never came out. What money didn't you get? I don't know if I made a fucking dime off. slaughterhouse i don't care if i made nothing i believed in them so i you know i wanted them to i wanted them to be huge man i really did i wanted a group that lyrical to fucking just bust through everything you know i'm saying and It definitely hurt my feelings a lot when the album didn't do good, the first album.

It was just like, fuck, man. Like when we got CeeLo on the hook of the My Life song, I was like, yo, this might be out of here. What was the meaning behind the line when you said the last hit, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, the last hit you got was with your ex-chick?

That was what that was. What's that? That was a tap.

Just a tap? It was a tap, but it was also saying that his alleged domestic abuse things or whatever, which I'm not going to get into, but I feel like... I feel like...

The reason I had to do that is because, like I said, there's a fine line between saying, you know what, this guy's really been cool to me. He's helped me out. and tried to help out on many occasions.

So I'm not going to go in on Untouchable like that. I'm going to say it ain't for me. Not crazy about it.

Whatever, whatever. But to be the worst song you've ever heard in your life? Have you listened to your own shit?

Do you not listen back? Because if that's the worst fucking song you've ever heard in your life, I don't know. Yeah, this song is interesting. So we'll never see that Glasshouse album, probably, as far as you know. I don't know.

I don't have the answer to that. I... I want to just make it clear though that aside from the Joe shit, I think that Slaughterhouse is one of the best rap groups ever to ever happen.

But that being said, I wish their first album would have connected to more people than it did. I don't, to this day, I still don't. Me and Paul are like, what the fuck happened? You know what I'm saying? But look, man, everybody's not going to like it.

everything you put out all the time. That was a dream team of MCs, though. And I think a lot to what you're saying in regards to why aren't people reacting to these words, Smith, is that's how we came up.

And honestly, what people may not realize is that's what really separated hip-hop from R&B, rock and roll, and other genres was our ability to bend words, to create patterns that made it unique to our genre specifically, which it seems like is something that doesn't get any credibility. People don't put a whole, not everybody put a whole lot into that now. They don't give a lot of credence to that, you know, which is probably Slaughterhouse could have been a victim of that, that kind of ideology.

You also, in this album... You went in on MGK you guys had a discrepancy He mentioned it in his response song rap devil, you know that Let's call Sway and ask him why I can't get on Shade 405. That was in response, so I seen him on the street once, and I didn't know he couldn't come up to Shade at that time, 405. And I said, man, come on up, man. And then I had to see him again and say, hey, man, I don't know what the shit is, but until that gets cleared up, there's no way I can have you on there.

What's the shit with that? What happened? Well, the shit is, just for the record, The thing that was going on that he was saying about my daughter, I didn't even know about that until like literally like a year and a half later. Okay.

I wasn't, it just, it never hit my radar. And then one day, you know, you go down the fucking wormhole of YouTube and whatever, right? So I see.

Machine Gun Kelly talks about Eminem's daughter, whatever, right? So, what the fuck? Click on it.

Like, yo, why is he... Then he starts doing a press run, basically, about Hailey. I'm like, what the fuck?

Yo, my man better chill, right? So that's not why I dissed him. The reason I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that.

Okay. The reason that I dissed him is because he got on. First he said, first when he said, I'm the greatest rapper alive since my favorite rapper Bambi from Shea 45 or whatever he said, right?

Like I'm trying to hinder his career. I said, well, fuck about your career. You think I actually fucking think about you? You know how many fucking... rappers that are better than you, you're not even in the fucking conversation.

I don't care if you fucking blow or if you don't blow. It doesn't matter to me. But then when you get on Tech N9ne's album and you start sending shots and people People start hitting me up.

Yo, Machine Gun dissed you. He just dissed you. He dissed you.

I'm like, I listen to it. I'm like, did he really diss me, though? I keep listening to it. Y'all just rap.

You're not gods. And then somebody sends me a screenshot of his Twitter. And it says, had some shit to get off my chest.

You just rap. You're not God. Some shit like that. And I was like. A reference to the Rap Gods song.

Yeah. So I'm like, on the song, he said, y'all just rap. You're not gods. And on Twitter, he said, you just rap.

You not God. Had some shit to get off my chest. And I'm seeing.

And by the way, this was on the heels of the freestyle he had just did about shade 45. It's like, shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Now, now I'm in this fucking weird thing because I'm like, I got to answer this motherfucker.

And every time I do that. It makes that person as irrelevant as people say I am in hip-hop, I make them bigger by getting into this thing where I'm like, I want to destroy him, but I also don't want to make him bigger. Do you know what I'm saying?

Because now you're a fucking enemy. I'll leave it at that. I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna do at this point right now because I'm still kind of waiting to see what You haven't heard his rap double response. No, I heard it.

What do you think of it? It's it's not bad for him T, that's some good lines, isn't it? Did y'all really call Interscope to try to shelve this? Fuck no. I never made a fucking call.

Made a call to Diddy, really? I got Diddy's number. Just hit him up.

Yo, Diddy, what up? Never happened. It didn't feel like a diss to me.

It just felt like pitiful. I'm like, ah, fuck. Nah, I'm feeling bad for something I didn't even have. to do with. So that's how that happened.

So he made a reply to my reply. So regardless of what the fuck he wants to say, oh, it was from six years ago. Motherfucker. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.

Wait. I'm telling you the reason I dissed you now. Yeah.

I'm telling you. And... I'm gonna sit back and I'm gonna wait for a second just to see because if people start firing off and I try to answer every fucking body that I dissed, on kamikaze or had words about i'm gonna be going the next five fucking years making this song after this song you know what i'm saying so yeah like you're gonna get hit though jesse reyes is featured on this project young up-and-coming star she's on two songs how did you find jesse reyes um I was coming home, I got home one night from a video shoot actually and she was on TV.

It was a Seth Meyers show and she was doing that song Gatekeeper and I was like who the fuck is this? Because her voice to me was so crazy. So I rewound it, and I was like, oh, shit.

I got to check her out. So I went down the wormhole of looking up shit. And I was like, yo, I really want to fuck with this chick. Because she, right now, my personal opinion, I think she's going to really blow up.

That's my personal opinion. I've seen people. Very talented people not do that, but I think that I would put my money on her, that she will absolutely be huge. But I don't even know if like necessarily in the pop world or anything like that. I don't feel like she does pop music.

I feel like she she just she comes from a real place and she writes her own shit. First time I got in the studio with her, I played her a couple of beats and she just started writing to one right there. Later hook.

Good guy. I was like, oh, shit. So she wrote.

She's quick. To Good Guy. To Good Guy. Yeah. The one she's singing at the end?

Yeah. There's Nice Guy, Good Guy. Good Guy. And the reason that that happened is because, oddly enough, she had already had a song called Nice Guy. She had that song, right?

So I think that was the last day I was in LA. I came back home and wrote to that one. And then I was like, I want to write to the other one too, but they're both saying...

Nice guy, good guy. And I was like, fuck it, I'll make it like it's kind of one song. Dre's all over this project? Dre's input is all over it. For sure.

He felt like me and him had a couple discussions about the last album. And one of the things that he said to me was, he was like, he hit me up one day, he was like, yo, I don't like how motherfuckers are talking about your album. And he had heard Revival, right?

Yeah. Him and Jimmy Iovine had sat in there and listened to most of the songs I had done at Rick Rubin's studio. And based off that reaction, I think Dre was a little confused, too, when that happened with Revival.

Probably not more so than me, but we had a conversation. earlier in the year and I think I had only had one song by that time it this was like January yeah I had the one song and was thinking about releasing it and then another song got when I got back to Detroit recorded it like okay now I got two songs I might as well do a fucking album and that's kind of how that came about but Dre also there's a couple songs that He kind of deaded him just because he didn't have a good reaction to him and he also felt like one of them's going a little far. What does that mean?

Like how far did it go? It went, it definitely went too far. When you say go too far, I feel like Kamikaze was the place where if you were ever going to go, so-called too far, this is where it would be.

You did the BET verse for the rap cypher. And in it, you covered a lot of content that was relevant to the world we live in today that some folks want to sweep under the rug. And this is my own personal opinion.

Conversations we have every day on Shade 405 on Sway in the Morning. We talk about, you know, the injustice, policies, prejudice. We talk about discrimination, all of these different things. Rather not, we're in the middle of a race war that is trying to be perpetrated by people in power. Not a war in the sense where people are going to pick up guns and shoot at, well, maybe, shit.

Right. But in terms of psychologically, the whole nine. So when you did that verse on the BET cipher, what I thought why it was necessary, King Crooked had a song called I Can't Breathe, where he talks about, man, we can't just be the only ones saying this. White rappers shouldn't stay quiet.

White rappers shouldn't stay quiet. I can't tell you how hard that line hit me. It was to the point where I'm like, this is how strong I feel about something. I got to put it in the right words, you know.

And I saw shit where it was like, oh, these are not new subjects. They're new to Eminem and, you know, that kind of shit. How did you respond to that reaction? You got backlash for that, you know.

I got backlash for the Trump cipher And you know it is what it is At least when this shit Is all said and done Maybe I can just be on the right Side of history but You got people dissecting the bars And going oh this shit is trash It's not even that good That's not what it's about You're missing the whole point I'm trying to like I'm trying to say this also to You My fan base who might have voted for him. A lot of people in my fan base probably did. And at the time I did the cipher, I realized after it was all said and done that maybe, maybe I should have just attacked him.

When you said, I drew, you drew that line in a sand, maybe you should have not done that. You should have reworded it and showed empathy. Well, that's what I realized after I was done.

That's kind of how I felt because it's like, okay, this is, this is like. This is backfiring on me and I don't care. I don't give a fuck if that's what happened and hurt my sales.

I don't care about that. I care about the message I'm trying to convey. Why you felt a need to stand up, though? What was that for you as Marshall? What made you?

Because I was just watching it every single day. I watch a lot of news, right? The thing that pissed me off the most, that really set me off when I started going crazy with the pen, because I'm like...

the Kaepernick thing. And when that shit happened and how he kept changing the narrative and kept changing the narrative. You fucking, ah, I can't, I can't, um, I don't want to get into this whole Trump thing anymore. Well, you mentioned at the end of the ringer, Asian Orange sending a secret service to your house.

Did the secret service really come to your house after that? They came to my studio, yeah. Okay. And they asked, they had, they were just basically asking me questions about my lyrics to see if...

what the intent was behind them and if I was making a actual threat or just expressing myself. So that really happened. Wow, that's crazy.

Right now what we're seeing too, because Colin Kaepernick was named the face of Nike's 30th anniversary of Just Do It. You saw that, right? And then you got a whole slew of people that are now burning Nike shoes and Nike products.

I saw that. It's infuriating. Yeah.

What do you think? Infuriating. Yeah.

Like really? The-the-Nike supports people who kneel for the anthem at this fucking point. Come on. Seriously? Seriously?

You gotta be a fucking moron to think that that's just what it's about and it's that fucking cut and dry. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Like, there's a meaning behind this shit and there's real pain behind this shit. And you're burning a fucking pair of shoes? When you go about your fucking day and you got your job and you're doing thinking about all this other shit That's what really fucking bothers you people ain't gonna stop watching football. They're just not yeah football to me is the best sport there is and What draws you to the game? Should not be if that's how you feel about your country and you feel like you should stand for the anthem, stand for the anthem.

That's fine. But you also need to realize that this is America and people have died for these rights to be able to protest and to be able to take a knee. Stop making it fucking personal about yourself. You have nothing to do with this.

I agree. We got to get back to Tyler, the creator, man. I'm a I'm a I'm a big fan of Tyler's, you know, and I recently saw him perform. I know that Tyler was a big fan of yours growing up.

Right. And then I recall you even reading about you saying. some good things about iFuture, how they're pushing boundaries years ago.

Yeah, for sure. And you said some great things about them as a talent, as pushing boundaries as a group, iFuture as a whole. Yeah. What happened with you guys?

Yeah, no, I really did like them. I thought, like... I thought their movement was really cool too.

Did y'all make music? We didn't make music, but you know, I just felt like, okay, there's a mutual respect, you know. And a lot of the shit that ended up happening after that, like the tweet he put out with talking about Shady 15 and why can't people that are close to him tell him that his shit sucks and it's trash and... Like, okay, listen, man.

You don't have to like it. And it could really suck. But being that somebody really was cool to you, you would expect some kind of reciprocation. And just don't go public with it and publicly express your opinion and how much my shit is trash. Okay, so I chalk it up to them being young and just kids.

You know what I'm saying? So it's like, all right, I've been there. You know what I'm saying? Like, I was a dick when I first came out.

You know what I'm saying? Uh... Yeah, man.

You were. I know. Yeah. I feel bad about it. I'm sorry if I ever was a dick to you.

But I don't think I ever was. Was I? Yeah, one time, man.

But hey, hey. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's true. We'll talk about that.

Okay. Um... Nah, man.

So I liked him. And then Earl Sweatshirt gets in an interview after Tyler trashes me. And then Earl Sweatshirt, anybody who listens to Eminem is drinking too much Mountain Dew.

And... And I'm just like, really? Like what the fuck? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like you guys were just on tour with us.

We hung out, like we, we kicked it, made jokes. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, so the last straw, like, look, I know a lot of this shit. I could, I, I could come across being very petty.

Yeah. But at a certain point in time. Someone has their breaking point, you know what I'm saying? So, when Tyler tweeted out the thing about Walk on Water, this fucking song is horrible, I was like, alright. I need to say something now, because this is fucking...

It's stupid. You know? But at the same time, I'm not gonna let everybody just keep fucking, I'm not gonna be America's punching bag and motherfuckers just wanna think it's cool and safe to say whatever the fuck they want about me. I think it shocks people, you know, because Because for all your career, you was the, I just don't give a fuck guy. That can work both ways.

How so? Because you don't give a fuck, you will fire back at somebody who says something about you. I picked and chose who to, that I wanted to say my piece with.

Yeah. Because a lot of those things were personal. But then there's a lot of things that aren't personal in Kamikaze. You know, it's just the game and competition. You know what I'm saying?

Spirit of an MC. Spirit of an MC, yeah. But, you know, with the Tyler, the Creator thing, man, I realize now. And I realize when I said it, but I wasn't like...

in the mind frame of... I was angry when I said this shit about Tyler. The fact of like, every time I saw this kid, like, oh, he's so cool to you.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I loved his energy, like everything. You know what I'm saying?

Like, he was a funny dude. Like, he's super charismatic and shit. But I'm sitting back like, man, at what point, at what point do I have to say something?

Just to defend myself and I think that the word that I called him on the album was on that song was one of the things where I felt like This might be too far because in my in my the homophobic in my quest yeah in my quest to hurt him I realized that I was hurting a lot of other people by saying it and at the time I was so mad it was just whatever but in the midst of everything else that was going on on this album the things that it took to pull this album together and all that kind of shit. It was one of the things that I kept going back to going, I don't feel right with this. Before the album came out, I had the conversation with Paul and we spun the word back. But now I realize people can hear what I'm saying anyways.

In the case of this, man, I feel like just, man, I wish you and Tyler could sit down and hash that one out. Now that you fired your shot back and he said what he said, because I think that's a special young man. And he could probably use your mentorship and you could probably feed off of what he has to offer as well. I could tell it was different from Joe or some of the other.

Yeah, it's definitely different. It's not it's not it is. It's not as personal.

It's one of them things like, all right, dude, you deserve a tap now because I think you thought it was cool to just, because you slid with the other things and I didn't say shit because like I said, I was chalking it up to them being young and just kids, man. I'm like, but at the same time, at what point do I just got to keep taking it? I'm going to switch topics because something I see, I keep hearing this reoccurring theme about how important writing is. One of my favorite things.

Tracks on the album is featuring an up-and-coming star that I think he, along with others that you mentioned on the album, like Sean or Kendrick or J. Cole. Yeah, Joyner Lucas. Powerful, real powerful artist.

I like y'all together on this track. You know, I think it's a good mesh between a veteran and somebody who's on the rise. He's so good, too.

What is it about him that you like? The first time I saw him was like five years ago at one of the BET Cyphers. And I peeped out, he was like, he was saying a lot of lines that I saw some of me in that.

But at the same time, it was different because it was like, early on in my career, whenever I get to do a BET Cypher, I want to try to, I want to write till my shit stands out. You know what I'm saying? And he stood out so much to me.

I was like, yo, he was talking about Miley Cyrus and if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure it was something like that. But he was talking about pop stars and he was doing this kind of thing. But I'm like, yo, people are going to remember that.

I remembered it. And then I kind of started when he made the Ross Capucione. Yeah. The way he did it from the two perspectives, it was genius and it was like, stood out.

It stood out so much to me. Not only that though, like the rhymes. Like I'm listening to the rhymes. When I'm listening to a rapper, I'm listening to what you're bringing to the table as far as a skill set, right? That's the first thing I'm honing on.

But the fact that, like I said, he's not compromising bars to tell his story. He's still got... complexity in there. You know what I'm saying? But he's, the water ride went, like he's taking you on this journey.

And I never snapped out of that journey until it was over. You know what I'm saying? And I was like, yo, this kid is fucking incredible.

Y'all got a, and I'm paraphrasing, I can't remember the lyrics exactly, but you come in with a verse where you say, I got a couple of mansions, but I still don't have any manners. You got a couple of goat riders, but to these kids, it don't actually matter. What the fuck happened to hip-hop?

What's going on with hip-hop? People took that line and thought you were indirectly talking about Drake. No, see, here's the thing. I saw that too. Yeah.

Drake is always gonna be in my good graces because he did something for one of my daughters that I will never forget, and he will always be in my graces with that. And I like Drake. What I'm telling you with these lines...

is I don't know what's real and what's not at this point. You know what I'm saying? Because you hear shit about this rapper, that rapper, whatever. I'm telling you that I don't do it, never have, and never will. If I ever need a ghostwriter, I need to just fucking put the mic down.

You know what I'm saying? So that's my personal belief. As far as anybody out here that does use ghostwriters, I don't know what I'm saying. That's fine. If that's what you do, that's fine.

But I'm telling you, I don't do it. Hip-hop was the most important thing that empowered me as a kid. It made me feel...

I have a line where I say it made me feel tough when I wasn't. When I was a scrawny little kid, growing up on 8 Mile, walking up the fucking block, put headphones on, and it made me feel powerful. Hip-hop probably was I I mean it was it was it was like my dad Hip-hop, you know I'm saying and it was the only thing that made me empowered It made me feel good about myself and when I started being able to write rhymes and figured out I could do it That's where the feeling comes from to me because The excitement is being able to come up with the shit.

You know I'm saying It taught me how to throw my first punch gave me the confidence. Okay, be able to throw my first punch and to realize realized not only that, the fact that Proof used to beat my ass all the time in the backyard boxing. And one time he beat me like literally to the fucking ground.

And he was just like, Em, just stop. Because I kept getting up, coming at him. But I'm like, but I just kept getting beat up. He was fast, man. He's very quick.

And but it made me realize like, OK, taking a punch is nothing. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not.

Your fear when you're a kid is like, oh, my God, if I get hit, what's it going to, what if they hit me in the nose and it jams my nose and my brain and I die? Like, kind of shit you think about. But, nah, man, hip hop, hip hop, like, since its beginning, I was always under the impression that every rapper wrote their rhymes.

And when you heard about. Kumo D battling Busy B. It was who's bringing the best rhymes to the table. You know what I'm saying?

Who's going to be able to say the best shit? Who's the cleverest and the wittiest? And then years later, fast forward, you hear Eazy-E saying Ice Cube writes the rhymes that I say.

And I remember being a kid, like hearing the line, but it never really... I just didn't really care. You know what I'm saying?

It didn't really affect the way I felt about Eazy-E or the way I felt about NWA. I think in all fairness, though, I think Drake... as a superior writer to be able to sustain the level of success he has.

Yeah, I mean, he makes great music. There's not really even much you can say about it, you know. On this Kamikaze album, I feel like I was pretty direct at who I was kind of taking shots at and going at and who I wasn't, you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't send subliminals to Drake for, there'd be no reason for me to do that.

But I am expressing to you that regardless of what any of these other dudes do, I have never, not even a line, not even anything. I wouldn't be able to have fun with it if I couldn't write it. It makes sense.

You go in really hard about the Grammys in a way. Man, you kind of, you drag the Grammys in the mud when you talk about you have a few Grammys, but you feel like you had to sell your soul to get them. And you didn't know if you wanted it for the recognition or the trophies, but then what's the difference? You know, and that Grammys pretty much suck the blood of artists and nominate them, have them come to the shows. Which they do.

They do it every fucking year. Yeah. And I got I'm just tired of seeing it. And for whatever reason, it's like they're always pitching this hint that you might win album of the year, which is a.

used to be a big deal. I don't think it's a big deal now. Um, you know, sat at home this year for the Grammys and watched Jay and Kendrick not get it. And I felt like one of them should have got it.

I felt like Joyner Lucas should have won a Grammy for I'm not racist. Yeah. Absolutely should have won a fucking Grammy every year. We, we, we went, it was, I would be up for album of the year. And then The winner is Norah Jones.

Who? And I don't, I'm not even trying to say anything bad about her music. I just, at that point, I had never heard of her.

Yeah. And none of my friends did either. You know what I'm saying? So we, okay, whatever. And then Steely Dan.

Okay, I know who Steely Dan is. I know Steely Dan back in the day. You know what I'm saying? But more than the Marshall Mathers LP impact? Like, okay, fine.

I watched 50. Same shit. 50 did not win Best New Artist at the Grammys. There was nothing bigger than 50. Nothing bigger and nobody since maybe like Snoop came out the gate like that.

My first album didn't do it. I never saw someone's first album and the wave happen like he had. And then he doesn't get it.

And then I get up there another year and what was it, the Eminem show? And it was like, what? I'm fine if I lose to fucking Kanye or someone that I'm like, OK, I respect that. I know who that is.

And Kanye has a huge following. He's made a massive impact on music. Fine, I'm good with that.

But don't fucking get us all here to use your selling point for your fucking show and stiff everybody every single fucking time. And I said, after that point in time, I was like, don't ever ask me to fucking come here again. Please do not ask me.

My answer is no for a hundred million years. Never again will I fucking go to the Grammys. Well, now, you know, I know that Jimmy Jam and some of the members of the board there are reaching out, just Blaze and different folks are now trying to.

Make it better. Would you ever consider, you know, joining the board and maybe you have a vote in it? First of all, that vote is fake as fuck. That's not a real vote.

That's not a real vote. They give it to who they want to give it to. They give it to their darlings.

The fucking, oh, this got critical acclaim, but it sold two records. Like, it ain't about always what you sell. I get that.

Vanilla Ice. I understand. You know what I'm saying?

Like, but. There comes a point where when an overwhelming something comes along that has this wave and impact on music and you give it to fucking Lotta fuckin'Dottie Who? Lotta Dottie!

It's only Lotta Dottie But you know what I'm saying, like it's like Man, I don't know who won over Kendrick and Jay Bruno Mars is fucking incredible. Bruno Mars is great. But I remember Beyonce didn't win for the album Lemonade. Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, what the hell? You know, it's like they're so fucking tone deaf to what. is actually going on but they're not in a sense of oh we're gonna get beyonce here we're gonna get jay here we're gonna get we can say all these names are gonna be here and we'll make them i guarantee you i guarantee you that the people from the grammys was on the phone with beyonce's people or jay-z's people saying every year that they're up for something hinting they're gonna win to get them to come there so you're over there i guarantee you over there um I guess I won't see you at the Grammys this year.

Yeah, probably not. Probably not? Okay. What if you're nominated?

First of all, I won't be. Okay. Because they know that I don't like them.

And if I was, I wouldn't win because they know that I don't like them. One final question. I want to ask you about a song that, to me, man, it was probably one of the most heart-wrenching songs on the project was Stepping Stone. You know, and you tell a history.

of D12, how it started, you know, and what happened through the duration. And at the end of it, you said it's over. That's it.

Were the members aware of that song? They were. They were? They were.

They got a heads up and... You know, I explained. I honestly, I have not talked to Swift and Canaver yet about the song.

They just knew it was coming down the pipe. But the way I explain it is this. Proof was the glue. that binded us all together, right?

He did so much shit behind the scenes that I didn't even realize and did things to keep us a group and to motivate us. Mention that you guys knew all this stuff was happening. but y'all never talked about it. You know, you were men. You know, I'm paraphrasing in the verses, but everybody was doing their solo projects, and, you know, y'all was drifting further apart.

Well, that's what ended up happening, was everybody was kind of doing their solo things, made solo projects, mixtapes, and things like that, and were doing shows, and I think the conversation now going forward is to... See if there's anything we can do to help their solo careers. You know, and we'll always be friends, man. We've always been friends since we were kids. You know what I'm saying?

So we'll always be good on that aspect, you know. And I want to help them do whatever it is that their next thing is on the agenda. You know what I'm saying? Mixtape, album, shopping, whatever it is. When I listen to these stories, and I've known you since the 90s and I've known you through these ups and downs and even if I wasn't there on your side, I was there on your team, so to speak, you know.

Absolutely. I've been thinking, man, this man must have went through some great therapy because right now... Now, where you at, you seem like you're in a comfortable place. You know who you are. You know what you want.

And even though you got these people coming at you, you're strong enough to respond in a way that you wouldn't naturally do it. How did you get to this place, though? Did you do therapy? Was it?

No, I just, my music is therapy, you know. So I just, I don't know, man. I've been coasting through, and I feel like I just, I always, I write all the time, whether I use it or not, you know, I write all the time. And that's my best therapy is to be able to get stuff out.

Just like the D12 song. It was like one of those things where like, I know that they have things they want to say to me and I have things I want to say to them. So this is kind of how I wanted to tell them, like, you know, I love you guys like forever. Like I'm here.

It just, doing a D12 album just doesn't seem. In this climate right now? Yeah. I don't know how that would even work.

You know what I'm saying? You're going through enough with this climate. Right.

So, imagine D12. Let me ask you this, moving forward, this will be my final... Final question.

You have always to the public seem like an elusive, introverted person that they don't always have access to. I think that's hilarious. OK, by the way, you know, I'm not going to fucking clubs. anymore i don't do that you know i'm saying i'm sober i don't but i do a lot more and go a lot more places than people actually think i do i just do it under the radar man that's all we don't you know in detroit we don't have paparazzi like la or new york you know i'm saying so i'm out a lot it's just that people don't really see me so you out and about yeah that's interesting to know like i said you're not going to catch me at a club fucking throwing money or You know what I'm saying?

Like, I've been through all those days and all that shit. Like, as far as, you know, I've done the whole club scene. Yeah.

I did it for a long time. Too long. Nah, but Em, congratulations, man.

I like the Kamikaze project. Thank you, man. I think the majority of folks who listen to it cannot deny that you're an elite group of lyricists.

Thank you. And I'm a dude who's been in this for multiple decades, and you're at the top of my list. Thank you, man.

Thank you. And I like to see you keep it up. keep flying forward regardless of the you know whatever the critics have to say they've been they've been you've had critics since your first album you know so that that's what it's gonna be but i think people can appreciate the fact that you fire back that you ain't gonna stand for it um and that you still are making you're still making great music so congratulations brother absolutely thank you man and listen i'm glad i could sign that vinyl for you man oh yeah you know if you want to i like i said i'm gonna take it home check out some bars okay Okay, here let me see that, show that to the camera. You see that? Swaying Tech, shout out to King Tech.

This my brother, partner in crime since high school, since day one, still Swaying Tech, live forever. Shave 45, Monday nights, make sure you tune in, okay? Shave 45! Shave 45, damn it!

Transcript for:Eminem's Kamikaze Insights and Reflections

Transcript for:
Eminem's Kamikaze Insights and Reflections