Eminem celebrates XXL’s 25th anniversary with a look back at his illustrious career, which the magazine has carefully documented the entirety of. In his own words, Em shares insight on what he’s learned, how he stays motivated and why being a true lyricist has always been essential to who he is as a person.
Words: Marshall Mathers
I never thought I would be anyone’s influence. When my first album came out, I was still staying wherever I could stay—mostly with Kim and her parents. I didn’t get my own house until the second album. I wasn’t sure before then if this was a one-time thing, but I had people knocking on the door and I realized that it was getting crazy. That was one of the inspirations for writing “Stan.” It was like, These people are actually looking up to me? I also was amazed. Y’all are getting pissed off about me? Little old me? How in the fuck is this happening? So, it inspired songs like “Stan” because to have fans is a dream come true, but it’s also so bizarre and so surreal. Even as I sit here now, I still trip out in my head about how it got to this level. All I ever really wanted to do was to be a respected MC. To make enough money to survive, so that I wouldn’t have to work a regular job. That ties into my competitive spirit, and I don’t know when that’s going to go away, if ever. That’s probably my biggest weapon mixed with lyricism.
Before any of this happened, before I signed to Dr. Dre and Interscope, I remember having this conversation with Royce [5’9″]. We had somebody at this hip-hop label who said they wanted to sign me when I was working with the Bass Brothers. I made three or four songs, and we gave it to this guy, and found out that he worked in the mail room and he wasn’t really who he said he was.
Travis Shinn for XXL
I was at the lowest point. I didn’t even know what I was going to do because it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I’m 24 years old and I got a baby to take care of and all I want to do is rap, but it didn’t look good. I was super depressed. So, Royce and I are having this conversation. We loved Redman. To this day, love Redman. Huge fuckin’ fan. And we had this conversation and I said, “Man, Royce, if we could just go gold, man. Think about Redman. He’s got so much fuckin’ respect. It doesn’t have to be any of that other stardom shit.” That conversation just always sticks with me because as shit started happening, I’m thinking, This is next-level shit. And I never expected it. There are a lot of building blocks and things that had to fall in place for things to go the way they did for me and if you take one of those pegs out, the whole fuckin’ thing would’ve fallen down.
I remember I was in the car with some friends and shit right before I went to L.A., right after the Rap Olympics in 1997. The Firm album had just come out and “Phone Tap” was one of the greatest beats ever made to me. I remember saying, “If I could just get with Dre, man, my God that’d be so crazy. He’s so fuckin’ ill.” Three weeks later, I was at Dre’s house. We made The Slim Shady LP. That was a fun album to make, but it’s also where everything suddenly changed.
One of those changes was that drugs became a part of the way I was living my life once I got signed. When I first came out to L.A., me and some guys I was hanging out with used to go to Tijuana and we would buy drugs. Vicodin and that kinda shit. I don’t know how many times we did it, but it was so easy to go back and forth to do it. The last time we went, we’re second in line and this dude in front of us starts arguing with the guy in Customs, and they fuckin’ throw him down on the ground and start pulling pills out his pockets and shit. We were scared shitless, but we got through. And when I say we had the motherlode. Our pants were frickin’ stuffed with pills. I don’t know how many we had.
Obviously, if I ended up in jail, the album probably wouldn’t have come out and nothing with my rap career would’ve ever happened. I would’ve been done right then. So, it should have been one of the first signs to me, but I never thought that I had a problem. I just really, really liked drugs. As I started making a little money, I could buy more of them.
My addiction didn’t start in my early days when I was coming up. We used to drink 40s on the porch and just battle rap each other. My drug usage started at the beginning of that first album. I didn’t take anything hard until I got famous. I was experimenting. I hadn’t found a drug of choice. Back then you went on tour and people were just giving you free drugs. I managed it for a little while. And then, it just became, I like this shit too much and I don’t know how to stop.
When things started happening for me, I was getting a lot of heat, being a White rapper, and XXL wrote something about that. I remember going to one of those newsstands in New York when the magazine had just started out, and I bought that and a couple of other rap magazines. I flipped to the last page first and XXL was dissing me. What the fuck? I don’t even know if I read the whole article—I was used to reading things like that about me—but it hurt because I felt they didn’t know me to make that kind of judgment. Coming up, I had to deal with that a lot. I wanted to be respectful because what I do is Black music. I knew I was coming into it as a guest in the house. And XXL, The Source, Rap Pages and Vibe were hip-hop bibles at the time.
I understood, at the same time, everybody’s perception of a White guy coming into hip-hop and all of a sudden things start happening for him. So, if XXL would’ve even had a conversation with me, maybe they would’ve understood me more. Obviously, I was upset. And it wasn’t just magazines. I had rappers left and right taking shots at me. I was used to that, too. Coming up through the battle scene, that didn’t mean shit to me, you know? I would go head-to-head with whoever.
But we patched it up. I don’t remember how we got good. I don’t remember what conversations took place or what sparked it. I dissed XXL at first in my song “Marshall Mathers”: “And then to top it off, I walked to the newsstand/To buy this cheap-ass little magazine with a food stamp/Skipped to the last page, flipped right fast/And what do I see? A picture of my big White ass/OK, let me give you muthafuckas some help/Uh, here, XXL, XXL/Now your magazine shouldn’t have so much trouble to sell/Aw, fuck it, I’ll even buy a couple myself.” But then later during the beef between me and Ray Benzino I said something like, “I got XXL’s number anyways.” So, we eventually did the cover with me, 50 and Dr. Dre when we signed 50. And the war with The Source was going on.
