In 2009, Eminem released one of his worst-received albums of all time. Relapse was a 20-track body of work that even the Detroit emcee now regrets making. In 2007, the artist (real name Marshall Mathers) found himself heavily abusing drugs. As such, the project released two years later was incoherent and mediocre.
However, in 2010, Mathers made up for his 2009 shortfall with his seventh album, Recovery. The body of work, recorded in Detroit, featured the likes of Dr Dre, Rihanna, Lil Wayne Rihanna and even Joe Budden’s collective Slaughterhouse.
Recovery features hits such as ‘Love The Way You Lie’ featuring Rihanna and ‘No Love’ alongside Lil Wayne. The 8-times platinum album topped the Billboard 200 and is still Eminem’s third best-selling album. The body of work won ‘Top Rap Album’ at the Billboard Music Award and earned him the Grammy Award for ‘Best Rap Album’.
Following the project’s release, one of its main contributors, producer and songwriter Script Shepherd, gave several interviews about the album and unveiled that the Rocky Balboa films inspired one track he made.
Opening up about the eleventh track on the album, ‘Cinderella Man’, which he produced and helped write, Shepherd explained to MTV News, “[When I first heard it], I was in the bathroom. My wife called me, and I thought it was a bug [in the house]. She was like, ‘You gotta come now.’ It was amazing. I was in the house with my family. My kids were going to sleep. I woke them up. It was such a tight-knit project. I didn’t have a copy of it. I heard it on the Internet like everybody else, and I was the most excited person in the world, besides my wife.”
The song was named after a 2005 film. However, Shepherd was initially inspired by Rocky, stating, “It’s a stadium feel, an anthem. Like marching, marching towards something. The sound is big, the message is big on the record. It’s about just coming from nothing, not doubting yourself.”
He concluded, “I just wanted to have people feel like they’re moving with the record have a Rocky feel. It sounded more authentic to have people feel like they were stomping in the record.”
You can listen to the track in the video below.
