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What does The Marshall Mathers LP mean to you?
Eminem: It doesn’t mean shit to me. [long pause] [Laughs.] Nah, I mean, I don’t know. I guess it’s just a feeling that I associate with that time period.

When did you decide that this would be a sequel?
When I started recording this album, a lot of the songs that I would play for people, they were saying it reminded them of that era. Which was kinda what I was going for in the first place, but the fact that other people started taking notice made sense.
It’s revisiting some themes on The Marshall Mathers LP, but it’s obviously a different time period in my life. So that’s why I wouldn’t call it a sequel. A sequel would just be a continuation of everything that was on there.

What themes are you revisiting in particular?
Um… [long pause] certain things, man. I’m trying to think if I can answer this. And I’m retarded, so…. On the first Marshall Mathers LP there were some personal things that I addressed and on this record there are some chapters that I wanted to close. This isn’t Recovery, where I was coming off some personal tragedies. I’m not coming off of a drug overdose. It’s more about going back to the basics of hip-hop and some fundamentals in that sense.

Recovery has very personal moments on it but it deals narrowly with your addiction. The Marshall Mathers LP dealt more with your personal relationships. Do you feel more comfortable revisiting those now after having addressed your demons?
Yeah, I don’t know. A lot of my career I put a lot of my life out there. It was personal shit I would put out there and didn’t really give a fuck. Sometimes I think back and I’m like, “Damn, was I doing the right thing? How much of myself do I wanna put out there?’ In one aspect you want your fans to feel like they know you and connect with you. But then you’re like, ’Man I got nothing to myself no more.” I don’t want to give away how personal this shit is going to get.

Putting the title MMLP2 on this album ups the expectation for the fans. Did that weigh on you at all?

I don’t even know how to answer that question because I don’t want to say, like, “That album was the shit….” But I do feel like to call it that, it would have to live up to a certain standard.

People generally regard that album as the sh*t. [Laughs.] You sold a few copies and changed pop music. I don’t think anybody would find that vain.
I just don’t know how to say that though. I don’t feel comfortable saying that. [Laughs.]

At what point did Rick Rubin get introduced to the situation?
About a third of the way in. I’ve always admired Rick and what he’s done. The way he’s able to jump from different genres of music and be a master at all of them has fucked my head up for so long. Paul said he might be interested in working with me and when Yoda wants you to come see him, you gotta go see Yoda. So me and Paul went out to L.A. to see what the vibe was like. Me being a fan of his for so long and seeing his track record—from being a kid, records he’s produced with LL and his whole body of work—I’m meeting Rick for the first time so I’m a little nervous. Absolutely. And super flattered that he would even want to work with me. By his vibe being so chill and so mellow, that opened us both up to be able to create together. We had a conversation and got in the studio and started fucking around.

We’ve all seen him on the couch with his shoes off. Can you maybe give us some insight as to what it was like to work with him as a producer? Is it coaching you or is it actually working on beats or just talking out feelings?
All of that. It’s all three things: Guiding. Trying sh*t out. F*ckin’ programming drums and “Do you like this? Do you like that?”

What is the most significant thing Rick said to you as a coach?
He always said: “Try everything.” Whenever there was an idea, no matter how ridiculous it sounded or if it sounded wack at first, his whole theme was, “There’s nothing we shouldn’t try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll know it.” Me and him on a lot of these songs would have the same ear that if we tried something on a track, we both instantly knew at the same time that it didn’t work. There wasn’t much fighting for something. Rick has a very let-shit-happen-organically attitude. So the instant I’m not feeling something that he puts in a track, nine times out of ten he would take it out. “It obviously doesn’t work. There’s some reason you’re not feeling it.” So that’s one of the things that makes him so great, too. If he’s hooking the beat up, I can sit there with the pen writing something and be like, “Ahh, I don’t know if I’m really feeling this one.” He’ll say, “OK, move on.”

This record was the first time in a while that I actually started producing records again myself. Nothing on Relapse and very little on Recovery was produced by me. So that was one of the fun things to be able to do again: Get in there and make beats from scratch with Luis Resto and just see what we come up with. It felt good to be able to put the producer hat on again.

To Read the full interview head over to Complex.

 

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