Q FM Africa's Modern Radio
Rapper Eminem
Eminem has joined the likes of Rick Rubin, Grizzly Bear, A-Trak and The-Dream by becoming the latest Genius-verified artist.
The rapper has annotated more than 40 lyrics for tracks from across his own catalog and select songs by other artists.
Throughout his annotations, Eminem gets candid about his life and career, discussing his addiction to pills and sometimes-fraught relationship with his colleagues.
Lyric: [Entire Notorious B.I.G.’s verse]
There’s people who rap to make songs, just because they enjoy doing it and want to express themselves. And then there are people who rap competitively. I believe that anybody who competitively raps — like Drake and Kendrick and Jay-Z — raps to be the best rapper. People diss each other, but it’s more in the vein of “How can I kill you with record sales? Or with a flow? How can I be better than you at making records, at punchlines, metaphors, wordplay, syllables?”
But when you have two rappers like Biggie and Tupac getting into it, you get the hip-hop community torn. No one wants to see something real happen. If for a second you entertain the idea of that being entertaining, if something ever happened out of that? No. That’s not healthy.
2. “Just Don’t Give a Fuck” (1999)
Lyric: “So put my tape back on the rack/Go run and tell your friends my shit is wack”
When we put [Eminem’s 1996 debut album] Infinite out, it was local. We pressed up under a thousand, initially. We expected we’d be able to get something with it, though. When that didn’t happen, it was really deflating. People were saying that I sounded like AZ and Nas. I was upset. Not to say that I didn’t love AZ and Nas, but for a rapper to be compared to someone, for people to say that you sound like someone else — nobody wants that. I had to go back to the drawing board. So I remember getting mad. I was like, “I’m gonna rap like I don’t care anymore. Fuck it.” I started to write angry songs like “Just Don’t Give a Fuck.”
Lyric: “Slim Shady, Eminem was the old initials (bye bye!)”
Coming out with an alias was part of Proof’s whole idea. He said, “Let’s be in a group called D12, and there will be six of us, and we’ll each have an alias. We’ll each be two different people.” When I started rapping as Shady, as that character, it was a way for me to vent all my frustrations and just blame it on him. If anybody got mad about it, it was him that said it. It was a way for me to be myself and say what I felt. I never wanted to go back to just rapping regular again.
ROLLING STONE