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Eminem has taken to lyric website, Genius to discuss a selection of his most famous songs.
Eminem's label, Shady Records celebrated its fifteen year anniversary last year with the release of a double album of greatest hits,which appears to have got the rapper in reflective mood. Like Rick Rubin and Fall Out Boy before him, Eminem has now annotated a selection of his greatest hits with little insights and anecdotes that are must-have reading for any fan.
Check out some of them below.
Eminem on ‘Lose Yourself’
“Maybe people are just thinking father rhymes with daughter or something. But it’s about repeating a pattern. The trick is to get the pattern to hit on the same beat — ‘grown farther,’ ‘own daughter,’ the ‘knows’ and ‘goes,’ like that.”
Eminem on ‘Stan’
“When I heard ‘your picture on my wall,’ I was like ‘Yo, this could be about somebody who takes me too seriously.’ So I knew what I was going to write about before I wrote it. A lot of times when I’m writing songs, I see visions for everything I’m writing. This was one of those."
"I remember Mark The 45 King sent me that beat. And when I first heard it, I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ But I didn’t know it was going to be so big. When I was writing it, I just thought, “Whoa, people are going to get sick of this because it goes on for so long.”
Eminem on 'Rap God'
"I don’t ever want to be too braggadocious. If I’m going to brag, let me pull it back with lines like “school flunky, pill junkie.” I’m a fucking waste of life. I’m a waste of sperm. I am a fucking outcast of society, I am a piece of shit. But I know how to rap. Other than that, I’m a fucking scumbag. I’m worthless. Or this is what I’ve been told."
"The hook was the first phrase I thought of when I heard the track. I thought “Okay, this has something to it and might be catchy but — I’m a “rap god”? Why? If I’m going to say that, I need to validate that."
"I don’t want to say it’s the crutch, exactly, but the theme of the whole song is: this is the only thing I know how to do. I don’t know how to do anything else, aside from play a little bit of basketball. Except if the Lions called me. I’m down to be receiver or something, or a running back. I’d be good for that."
Check out the full list of annotations here.
