“I love to play my stuff for Dre because I’m gonna get an honest reaction.”
Eminem sat down with Paul Rosenberg on his SirusXM channel on Shade45 to discuss and answer some of the mind-boggling questions surrounding his ninth studio album. One of the pressing questions on everyone’s lips after the tracklisting surfaced was the lack of rap features on the project. Outside PHresher who provided the hook on Cholraseptic, “Revival” was a downright pop affair.
Here’s what Em had to say about it.
“The rap features, actually, there’s a couple things I had in the works that ended up not working out,” he explained. “So I ended up not being able to have any rap features, aside from Phresher doing the hook on ‘Chloraseptic.’ ”
Later in the 45-minute Q&A, he spoke on his relationship with Dr. Dre and how it translates into helping him pick the right songs.
“It’s always the same with me and Dre,” he said. “Over the years, we’ve really become close friends. I would never look at it any other than that. This album, the last year or so is when things started to connect, and I know Dre was taking a break, and I knew that he had taken some time off, so I couldn’t really hit him up for some beats, so I kind of just kept going with what I was doing and came to him when the album was pretty much almost finished. We had the discussion that if he didn’t do a beat on the album could he at least mix, because he’s not only the best beatmaker in the world, to me, but he’s also the best mixer. Hands down. I don’t know what he does on the boards, like how he does it, because I’ve stolen all his tricks, and I still can’t make it sound like he makes it sound. It’s incredible.”
“I love to play my stuff for Dre because I’m gonna get an honest reaction every single time. And Dre’s going to tell me if something sucks,” he continued. “He’ll do it in his own way. He’ll be like, ‘Alright, where’s the fun at? I want to hear the fun, where’s the fun at,’ if I play him a bunch of serious tracks. You know, I can tell by his reaction. I actually threw out like three or four songs last time I was in Cali because they didn’t get the reaction from Dre. I know when he’s really into something.”
Slim Shady also discussed his collaborators on the album and his respect for them. Mainly, Pink.
“The Alicia (Keys) thing was great because I got a chance to be in the studio with her, and we got a chance to actually collaborate, so that was super important. And I also feel like having somebody on a song like that, to me, just made it mean more. It just felt right to me. The Beyoncé thing was incredible, I didn’t think it ever could have happened. It was one of the things on my wish list, but I wasn’t sure if it could ever happen, and also I never really had the right song to bring her and present, so I’m super grateful that came together. The Ed Sheeran thing, one of the producers I work with, Emile (Haynie) did the beat, and he sent it to Ed, and they worked together in the studio and they came up with that hook, and I just heard what the hook was talking about and I wrote the song. And I’ve always looked at Pink as kind of a rebel, and I’ve told her that, I super respect her art and her music. And we’ve worked together in the past, so it only made sense for me to have her on that song.
Eminem’s Revival is projected to move around 280K-300k in its first week which should be enough to land him the No. 1 spot on billboard 200. You can argue about those numbers but when you consider the era we’re in right now, those are decent.
