60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “My Name Is”—Eminem

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Rob reflects on the times when he was a child in the car with his mother and inappropriate songs played on the radio, as well as his times as a parent driving his kids and explicit songs played in the car. This all leads to a deep dive on the ever-so-controversial rap icon, Eminem, and what his hit “My Name Is” meant to the '90s. Later, Rob’s editor and the host of ‘The Wedding Scammer,’ Justin Sayles, joins the podcast to discuss growing up as a white rapper around the time of Eminem’s rise to stardom. SIGNED BOOKPLATE COPIES are available for preorder via Premiere Collectibles starting on Thursday, October 12: https://premierecollectibles.com/harvilla Don’t forget to get your tickets to the '60 Songs' live show on November 16! Get your tickets here: https://teragramballroom.com/tm-event/the-ringer-presents-60-songs-that-explain-the-90s-x-bandsplain-live/ For more from Justin Sayles, subscribe to his new podcast, ‘The Wedding Scammer,’ here: https://open.spotify.com/show/01UW2ZRTU0Q5Gj3uLHO1v6?si=EJJh0V9NQieSZjz6ZKmfow Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Justin Sayles Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, a couple quick announcements. My book, also called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, will be released on Tuesday, November 14th. It is available for pre-order now. If you would like a signed copy, we have partnered with Premier Collectibles to offer signed bookplate copies of the book. That link will be available in the show notes, and I will also put it up on Twitter, where my handle is simply at Harvilla, H-A-R-V-I-L-L-L-A. Also, 60 songs that explain the 90s is doing a live podcast event in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, November 16th at 8 p.m. at the Terragram Ballroom. Tickets are available now at the venue's website. That's T-E-R-A-G-R-A-M ballroom.com. I will be joined by your best friend and mine, Yassi Salik, host of Bansplaine and 24-question party people, and our special

guest Chris Ryan, co-host of the Watch. Please join us at the Terragam Ballroom in L.A. on Thursday, November 16th. Thanks a lot. Let me tell you about the angriest my mother has ever gotten at a song on the radio. It is 1990. I'm 11 or 12 years old,

and my mother and I are driving around town listening to the radio. We got errands. to run. We got grandparents to visit. We got basketball practices to attend. I sucked at basketball. Maybe later we'll hit up Pizza Hut. I can get a free personal pan pizza thanks to the Book It program. Bookit, all caps, exclamation points where you read 35, choose your own adventure books and you get to put little stars on your giant dinner plate sized Booket pin, which in turn gets you free pizza. I kicked ass at Booket. And so then a brand new heart song comes on the radio. Ooh, we love heart. Heart, the righteous and enduring rock band from Seattle, led by the sisters Anne and Nancy Wilson.

Barracuda, crazy on you, alone. These dreams. Ooh, these dreams. Sometimes when I feel like raising a ruckus, I just argue with a straight face that 80's heart is superior to 70's heart. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to hear me argue that. I believe that, and even I don't want to hear myself talk about that.

But now it's 1990, and Hart are boldly entering their third decade with this new song, whose title we are, for the moment, mercifully unaware of. The Salty Way Anne Wilson sings the word umbrella is your first sign that something's amiss. I am not a tremendously sheltered person at 11 or 12 years old, pop music wise. Between the ages of 8 and 11, I have already consumed roughly 3,000 hours of MTV. That is not a wild estimate. I did math to arrive at that number. Thank you.

Two hours a day every day for four years is somewhere around 3,000 hours. Don't check that. Thank you. I've already watched a lot of MTV. Man, that's 3,000 hours of the list. That's a lot of Madonna videos, Prince videos, Aerosmith videos, Guns and Roses videos, Janet Jackson videos, Paula Abdul videos, the cold-hearted video is quite lascivious, if I recall correctly, Van Halen videos, etc. And occasionally my parents do object. Occasionally my mom walks in the room

while I'm watching MTV, right as George Michael is sauntering through, I Want Your Sex. and there's like eight different butts on screen in 10 seconds. And mom's like, all right, that's enough. And I get busted and she turns the TV off. And I go read another Choose Your Own Adventure book until the heat dies down. But generally, my parents are resigned. And certainly if the song's clean enough to play on plain old pop radio, then it must be fine. Right.

That edict will be tested often in the early 90s. My mother will not find Bell Biv-Divow's. do me amusing. She will not find naughty by nature's OPP. Amusing. She will not find I touch myself by divinels, particularly amusing. But for now, her guard is down. And we love heart. We are a pro-heart family. And this appears to be a heart song about a nice lady picking up a nice hitchhiker, which is ill-advised. But that's rock and roll for you. yeah so three salient facts about this song fact number one this song appears on heart's 1990 album brigade which is not as good an album as whichever 80s heart album has these dreams on it fact number two this

song was written by mutt lang famed aced cdc and deaf leopard and shenaya twang cohort mutt lang whose name I mispronounced repeatedly during the Shania Twain episode of this show. I kept calling him Mutt Lange. But jokes on you, I was mispronouncing his name on purpose as punishment to protest his shameful treatment of his future ex-wife, Shania Twain. Shame on you, mutt. That'll teach you. Fact number three, here's the chorus of this heart song. And wow, my mom is super not amused.

Oh shit. This is a song about a lady banging a hitchhiker that is literally called All I Want to Do is Make Love to You. Zero parentheses in that song title, by the way, which is an incredible show of restraint. For the title of a song with otherwise no restraint whatsoever, Mutt Lang had to be physically restrained from not making the title, All I Want to Do, parentheses, is Make Love to You. Or perhaps, even, all I want to do. do parentheses is make love close

parentheses open parentheses to you close parentheses anyway my mother's scowl was audible yikes i am just guessing that we did not get any further into this song than the first line of the chorus and thank goodness for that

unfortunately for mutt-lang heart the narrator of this song and my mother the only available rhyme for so we found a hotel is it was a place I knew well. There is literally no other series of rhyming words available in the English language. Tough break. It's a super inflexible language, English. It was a place I knew well it is then. They have sex in the hotel and she leaves him there in the morning.

That's the second verse. This is suboptimal, morally speaking, if you're my mother, but it's the third and final verse, which mom did get around to hearing eventually, they got her ultra-pissed. This would be the verse when the boy and the girl happened to reconnect a few years later. Oh, shit. This is a song called All I Want to Do Is Make Love to You in which a lady bangs a hitchhiker, ditches him, has his baby, and doesn't tell him. Listen, at 12 years old I am already more or less a lapsed Catholic, but I ain't allowed to be that lapsed, right? My mother almost sent me to a convent after we heard this song. That just sounded funnier, but seminary is the more appropriate gender term for where I was almost sent.

A seminary being where you go to enter the priesthood, you get me. Convent was funnier. The English language is inflexible. It is audible to me in this moment. the stormy thought bubble above my mother's head as she debates whether I will be allowed access to the mainstream pop music of the 90s on the basis of this heart song

my mother has grown concerned that the mainstream pop music of the 90s is so scandalous, so unscrupulous, so damaging to the moral and spiritual development of her beloved firstborn son that he must be shielded from it entirely. There's a version of the 1990s where the only music allowed at our house

is the Amy Grant Christmas album. Oh, Jesus, Ann, that's enough. You know who agreed with my mother and also profoundly disliked this song? Anne Wilson, who sang it. In 2017, Anne said, essentially, in songs that I don't write, I become a storyteller.

And I think I'm at my best as a story teller. And I think I'm at my best as a storyteller when I can dig what's being said. I didn't believe in the way the original lyrics were devaluing the man in the story, just going, yeah, I can pick you up, we can have a night of love, we can never even know each other's names. You can be so miraculous, and then I can just get up and leave you a note and walk out on you, have a baby and sort of gloat about your surprise when you see the kid. to me, that was kind of an empty, weird, sort of hateful story. End quote, you said it.

And Anne Wilson and my mom would really get along, I think. So that's the story of how a heart song almost convinced my parents to forbid me from watching MTV or listening to the radio before the 90s even really started. But it's also a story about how, in 1990, a song called All I Want to Do Is Make Love to You was arguably the Nogues. Ngarliest, most explicit, most morally objectionable piece of music you could possibly hear on MTV or pop radio. Let me tell you about the gnarliest, most explicit, most morally objectionable song my buddy Mike ever played for me. This is not the most enlightened moment of my life, nor the most enlightened moment of my life, nor the most enlightened moment of our time together. But in the interest of full disclosure and honest communication,

okay, yeah, now it's 1999 or so, and I'm 21 or so, and I pick up my buddy Mike to drive him somewhere, and he gets in my car with a burned CD. He's like, dude, you need to hear this. And I go, what? And he goes, this. Mom, she was the bomb making me calm on late night creeps. And all for sucking my bone when you was at home in the backseat of my Jeep.

Great ad lib. honestly. This is a song called simply Mama. Incredible restraint from a rapper named Bootleg. Bootleg hails from Flint, Michigan. Bootleg is a rapper and producer perhaps best known for his work with the Dayton family.

A Flint hip-hop group, perhaps best known for their 1996 album FBI, which stands for Fuck Being Indicted. That is a fantastic acronym slash album title. I don't mind telling you, I feel no ethical or spiritual dilemma whatsoever about greatly enjoying the idea of FBI standing for fuck being indicted, whereas I am wrestling now with quite an acute ethical and spiritual dilemma given the plain fact that when I was 21 or so,

I also greatly enjoyed bootlegs 1999 solo album, Death, before dishonesty. And in particular, this track, which to remind you is called Mama, and which consists of bootleg processing a breakup. Let's not belabor the premise here. Let's not get all rap

genius about this. That's the chorus. That's the lady who's breaking up with him in the background there. Okay, let's not belabor this in general, but I'm trying very hard now to show a little grace to myself then at

21 years old. During what in retrospect was perhaps the zenith of my immaturity and general rudderlessness. I am trying now to imagine myself. A wayward young adult, blasting a spectacularly uncouth rap song off a burn CD as me and my buddy drive out to, you know what, I think we might have been going to pick up our lady friends to take them to the boot, the country line dancing bar. And now I'm marveling at how spectacularly inappropriate this song is for that purpose. This is worst case scenario picking up some girls' music. And I have never heard this song before. I have never heard of bootleg before. But I am astounded. I am gleeful. I am wrapped by his callousness, his tastelessness, his audacity, his willingness to say anything to get a laugh, to get a rise out of you. It's infectious. You know, you get caught up in it.

the exhilaration of wondering what he'll say next and the barbed joy of knowing he could say anything. Okay, bootleg, that's enough. Jesus. And one thing I know in this moment, of course, is that a burned CD is certainly the only possible delivery system for a song this spectacularly uncouth. They certainly don't let guys like bootleg on the radio or MTV. Let me tell you about a moment very recently when I realized that now I'm going to get what I deserve. This happened Saturday afternoon. This happened like five days ago.

I am driving my sons, 12 and 10 years old to a birthday party. And we are listening to a giant playlist of 90s songs compiled by Cream Magazine, the newly revived Cream Magazine, which just put out a cool 90s themed issue. And they put together like a 200-7. song playlist in celebration. And I am listening to it straight through in full because that's how I roll.

I don't spend all my time listening to music from the 90s. Just to clarify, I have other interests musically and otherwise. But in this particular instance, this is what I'm doing. Okay. And this song pops up on the playlist. A song

called $10 bill by a scabrous New York City noise rock group called cop shoot cop and somewhere deep in my subconscious it occurs to me as this song starts grinding away in the minivan that i am de facto playing this song for my sons right now and the band named cop shoot cop is clearly visible on the screen on the dashboard and the minivan. My 12-year-old riding shotgun, he goes,

oh, cop-chew cop, that's a weird band name. And I go, uh, yeah. And meanwhile, I'm frantically trying to determine which interpretation of the band name cop-shoot cop is worse

for my son's moral development. The gun-based interpretation he's probably thinking of or, you know, the drug-based interpretation he's hopefully not thinking of. And meanwhile, I'm having another franourable, frantic thought, which is, oh shit, I don't know if there's profanity in this song or not.

And the smart, responsible, mature thing to do at this point is turn the song off, right? But I am enjoying the song. See, I would personally prefer to keep listening to the song. And so we keep listening to the song. And now, henceforth, we are white-knuckling it through a song called $10 bill by a band called Cop Shoot Cop. And I am feebly trying to manifest an absence of profanity in this song, lest it pollute the souls of my children. Sidebar. The lead singer of Cop Shoot Cop is a dude named Todd Ashley, who went on to form the rad gypsy punk band Firewater, who kick ass.

and who put out a bunch of rad records we used to play all the time on college radio. I just listened to a firewater song from 1996 called When I Burn This Place Down for the first time in 25 years. And I had a fantastic time. I love that song. I found an interview with Todd Ashley from earlier this year where he talks about raising his daughter. He says, I knew going into this parenting thing that I had a window of maybe four or five years in which I could vet the music my daughter would hear. Being a control freak, I took full advantage of those years. I wanted her developing brain to get a solid grounding in classic melody and song

structure before she was exposed to bullshit musical content from off the internet. Then he describes all the cool, kid-friendly mixtapes he made for her. Then he says, That window is closed. You don't want to know what sort of musical torture I am subjected to now. I can't wait till she's a teenager and will start hitting me with some cool sounds. End quote. Yeah, good luck with that, Todd. Anyways, the good news is, against all odds, there's no profanity in the cop shoot cop song, $10 bill. Damn doesn't count.

The song ends without incident. And the next innocuous profanity-free song on the playlist starts. And I congratulate myself on not. accidentally playing any songs with 50 pounds swear words for my children and I think I pretty much got this parenting thing mastered I'm really good at molding the minds of impressionable children this isn't so hard and then the next track on the playlist starts I'll fucking I'll fucking tie you to a fucking bedpost with your ass cheek spread out and shit right and then I turn the stereo off and nobody says anything

and we arrive at the birthday party and I drop off the boys and I get to listen to Method Man on the drive back alone. My work here is done. But yeah, nowadays, I'm where my mother used to be. I'm the one driving. I'm the one driving

with a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old in the car. I'm the one wincing when each new song comes on the radio or on the playlist that I ill-advisedly turned on myself for work. This is my job. And I'm wondering, if this will be the song that irretrievably corrupts my children.

And what or who am I most afraid of? What or who is the worst case scenario in terms of achieving a high enough degree of mainstream pop culture saturation that I can't protect my children from hearing it, even if I were actually trying to prevent my children from hearing it? Who is the true enemy? Who is the boogeyman? Turns out it was the same guy who was the boogeyman. in 1999. No, not Booleg. This guy.

My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 106th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s and this week we are discussing My Name is by Eminem. From his 1999 album, The Slim Shady LP. I feel like Eminem would appreciate the fact that a while back my one-year-old daughter was running around the house and my wife yells out, what's in the baby's mouth? And my 12-year-old son yells back, D's nuts. So I don't know if there's any point in concerning myself with the potentially foul language in the songs I'm playing for my sons anymore. I do believe that ship is sailed. They have achieved full maturity, which is great for me. Actually, one last thing for me to worry about. Let's check in with the most underrated emcee of all time.

Every list of the most underrated MCs of all time, compiled by anybody and listed anywhere is legally obligated to include this guy. Anthony Cruz, better known as A. Z, born and raised in Brooklyn and perhaps best known, known for his long friendship and professional association with Nas. AZ appears on Nas is not at all underrated because everyone reveres it. 1994 debut album Illmatic. Specifically, AZ wraps on the song Life's a Bitch. Sorry about the bad word there, kids. So this is AZ on his own 1995 solo album called Doe or Die. This song is called Rather Unique. It is produced by the great Pete Rock and it is a fine showcase for the distinct A-Z experience, the hard-nosed charisma, the polysyllabic monotone,

the deceptive serenity, the willingness to make up cool-sounding words, if that's what you've got to do to fit the meter. Tell them about your verbals, A-Z. My verbal's whip shit. Wayne's get birth to thoughts and triplets, fuck it. I'm on some flip shit, Betty, let my clips fit, dramatic. Votes, release shells like automatic, through music, magical, goes on any battles to be any battles with this guy will indeed be tragical a z has enjoyed a long and decorated an intermittently high-profile career he was in the firm the supergroup with naz and foxy brown and nature they put out one album in 97 i saw naz in concert last night

he's touring arenas with the wutan clan it was great but the firm didn't come up and a z wasn't there but nonetheless a z's great azes underrated and as the song says, A-Z is rather unique. But the thing about being rather unique is that other rappers, elsewhere, might get inspired. And here he is the zaniacan, maniac in action. So, get your brain relaxing. A zaniac and maniac in action. A braniac in fact, son. You maynidact attraction. You look insaney whack with just a fraction of my tracks runs. And here he is the zaniacan, maniac in action. hi it's marshal mathers a k a mn mn m born in in nineteen seventy two in st joseph missouri but never mind that because he eventually

settles with his mom in warren michigan in the suburbs of detroit young marshall has moved around a lot as a kid changed schools a lot fought a lot or gotten bullied a lot he fails ninth grade three times and then quit school entirely his father's a non-factor but when he's nine years old his cool uncle ronnie gets him the soundtrack to the 1984 breakdancing film Bracon, which is where

Young Marshall hears his first rap song, Reckless. Featuring the DJ Chris the glove, Taylor, and some verbals by the rapper Ice T. Young Marshall is enthralled. Ice T. One more thing to answer for. But when you talk

of MCs, Ice T is the best, and when you talk of DJs, forget the rest. The reckless. Young Marshall decides that he too will be a rapper. He takes the name Eminem. Marshall Mathers M&M. He spells it out so he won't get sued.

Okay, he joins forces with a close childhood friend named Deshawn Dupree Holton, aka Proof. Eminem and Proof spend every Saturday at open mic battles at the hip-hop shop, a club on West 7 Mile. Young Eminem struggles at first on the mic. his palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there's vomit on his sweater already, mom spaghetti, etc. Eminem will later tell Rolling Stone, he says, as soon as I grab the mic, I'd get booed. Once motherfuckers heard me rhyme, though, they'd shut up. End quote. Eminem is white, if that hasn't come up yet. Eminem and Proof hook up with a few more rappers and form the crew The Dirty Dozen. Eminem's debut solo album, released in 1996, is called Infinite. And he don't sound much like iced tea. Now does he?

No, on Infinite, the album that's officially streaming. Eminem's got a lot of deep thoughts in his cerebral, and he sounds a little bit like A-Z, don't he? It's not the most gratuitous rapper imitation you'll ever hear. it's not like he's doing like a blatant buster rhymes impression or something but it's clear enough the empirical lyrical miracle miracle lineage to which young m&m aspires you might say he's using way too many napkins there's no more napkins anywhere in the house wipe your hands on your pants You ain't got the intimidator,

Simulator Updator There's never been a greater Since a burial of Jesus Fuck around and catch all the venereal disease You ain't got the stamina You lacking the stamina The moment where he rhymes

The burial of Jesus With catch all the veneerial diseases That's where the Marshall Mathers We know and love peaks through Hey Is Infinite the album a good album? No Is it a commercial or?

critical success? No. Does it only sell 70 copies, as Eminem alleges in his 2008 autobiography, The Way I Am, which also features like 600 photos of Eminem flipping the bird? No, it probably sold more than that. But if we're talking rap albums sold primarily out of the rapper's car, young Eminem is no too short. All right. Talking about infinite, M later tells Rolling Stone, it was right before my daughter was born. So having a future for her was all I talked about. It was way hip-hopped out, like Nas and A-Z, that rhyme style that was real in at the time.

I've always been a smart-ass comedian, and that's why it wasn't a good album. End quote. Eminem's daughter is named Haley. Haley's mother is Eminem's already long time, on again, off again, girlfriend Kim. And unfortunately, you'll be hearing more about Kim and Haley real soon. But in the meantime, enjoy Eminem using this rhyme style while

it lasts. Or don't enjoy it. Your choice. That's no one who's identical to my fresh and authentic flow. I'm sure the party people can't agree when I'm in Tannic rhythm romantically freaking focus of frenically. That song's called Tonight. And it reminds me of a ward tour by a tribe called Quest, but in the sense that it makes me wish I was listening to a ward tour instead. Do many of the relatively few people who listen to Infinite observe that Eminem sounds quite a bit like ASE and Nas? Yes, they do.

Does Eminem take kindly to that? No, he doesn't. Quote, after that record, every rhyme I wrote got angrier and angrier. A lot of it was because of the feedback I got. Motherfuckers was like, you're a white boy. What the fuck are you rapping for? Why don't you go into rock and roll? All that type of shit started pissing me off.

End quote. And then one day he's on the toilet. This is a true story. Or this is the story Eminem tells in his first of many Rolling Stone cover stories. He says, boom. The name hit me. And right away, I thought of all these words to rhyme with it. So I wiped my ass, got up off the pot.

and went and called everybody I knew, end quote, the English language. More versatile than it first appeared. You see this going to be rated or restricted. You see this bullet holding my neck and self-inflicted. Dr. Slap my mom molested myself and got convicted. That don't sound like A-Z or Nas at all. In December of 1997, Eminem releases the Slim Shady EP. This song is called Low Down Dirty. Remember on the Black album

When Jay-Z goes, I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars. And he says, If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kuali And everyone got mad at him. This ain't that. This is not Eminem dumbing down to double his dollars,

though it is arguably much dumber. And Eminem is for sure about to become a multimillionaire. But if you're the sort of person preoccupied with authenticity, as rappers go, as rapper personas go. And if you generally look askance when a rapper flops and then radically changes up

his or her style for commercial gain, first of all, don't be that sort of person. Don't do that. We can find you something else to be preoccupied about. And second of all, I think enough time is passed where we can say

that this arrested, molested myself, and got convicted version of Eminem is way closer to the real Eminem than the far less scatological infinite at Eminem. And the terrible genius of Slim Shady is that he's still a spherical,

lyrical, miracle, who can hang with Talib Kuali or JZ, or Nas, or iced tea, or anyone as a pure rapper, as a super fast rhymer of words. But Eminem also raps like he's 12 years old and still sitting on the toilet. He has the

pure aisle, scatological, nigh unbearable, please don't say that, uncontrollable rage of the least controllable 12-year-old you've ever even heard of in your life. Skills do sell. But what Eminem is really selling

is a willingness to say anything and insult anyone. I'm not explaining the Margot Kidder line. Forget it. The Slim Shady EP is a song called Just Don't Give a Fuck. It has a song called Murder, Murder. It is a song called Just the Two of Us that I don't feel like talking about yet. But most importantly,

to my mind, it has a song called If I Had, which is relatively subdued and almost reflective and as close as you're ever going to get to Eminem explaining himself without also trying incredibly hard to antagonize you.

That's the intro, and it's not important except life is like a big obstacle in front of your optical is actually tremendously important. He never stops talking like this. Like an ever so slightly corny battle rapper, like an inveterate super fast rhymer of words. The word obstacle pops out of his mouth and the word optical pops out right after it.

It's unavoidable. It's involuntary. Or so I'd like you to think. It is very important to Eminem going forward that everyone just assumes that Eminem is absolutely no impulse control. That way, we'll let him get away with anything, right? This version of this version of Eminem always brings me up short.

Any album, any era, the glumness, the exhaustion, when he slows down, when he calms down, in a manner of speaking. when the cartoon ultraviolence abates for just a second, when the clouds part, but the mood somehow darkens, when he sounds human, when he sounds vulnerable, when he sounds like a poor kid in multiple senses who can't catch a break in any sense. Even something about the syntax of not having a home to have one in

if I did have one on appeals to me. Eminem has talked a great deal about this era, about getting fired from his dead-end job as a cook five days before Christmas, and only having $40 to get his daughter a present for her first birthday, about his cool uncle Ronnie dying by suicide, which left M so devastated he didn't speak for days

and couldn't bring himself to attend the funeral, about his never-ending fights with Kim and also with his mother, about how no one would take him seriously as a rapper until he became Slim Shady, the boogeyman, the Antichrist. And that's the guy I can hear so clearly on if I had. And another early song called literally Rock Bottom. He's got one foot in the gutter and one foot out.

He's got one foot out of the Superman phone booth and one foot still in. And for just these last few seconds of true vulnerability, he's still just daydreaming about what he'd do if he got everything he wanted. I am guessing that's not what you would do personally if you had a magic wand. That's not what I would do either

necessarily. But that's the difference between M&M and the rest of us. That's one difference. Another difference is that he adds the words while I'm on the John. He didn't have to do that. But he just wanted to rhyme something with without a condom on. Let's just say he's built different.

quick, what would you do if you had one wish? One wish. What would you do? Nope. Wrong. If I had one wish, I would ask for a big enough ass. Built different. And then the best thing that could ever happen to a guy like this happened.

He finished second. More specifically, he got evicted. Had to break into his own freezing cold apartment with no electricity to sleep on the floor, woke up the next day, went to the rap Olympics. a battle rap type situation out in L.A. And he finished second. He lost to a rapper named Otherwise. Otherwise with a Z.

Paul Rosenberg, star of many Eminem Skits and Eminem's faithful attorney at law. Paul Rosenberg once told Vanity Fair that otherwise the rapper, otherwise has never been heard from again. That's a great line. That's a gold medal rap Olympics line. Good job, Paul. Eminem loses. first prize was

500 bucks and a Rolex. The Rolex was probably fake, but he could have pawned it. Eminem is devastated. Paul Rosenberg tells Rolling Stone, he really looked like he was going to cry, end quote. That is a wild thing for your attorney to say in your first Rolling Stone cover story.

But these are the sorts of people we're dealing with. Best thing that could have happened to Eminem. Losing. This is the Michael Jordan getting cut in high school principal. the formative mortal wound, the permanent grievance. This is how you truly become the sort of person who wastes his one wish on a big ass so the whole world can kiss it. Scratch that, though.

Losing was the second best thing that happened to M&M. The best thing was when music mogul Jimmy Iveen and Dr. Dre hear a copy of the Slim Shady EP. Dre, talking to Rolling Stone, remembers it like this. in my entire career in the music industry, I have never found anything from a demo tape or a CD. When Jimmy played this, I said, find him now. End quote. Dre finds Eminem.

They go into his studio together. In their first hour together, this happens. Hi, kids. Do you like violence? Want to see me stick nine inch nails to each one of my eyelids? Uh-huh. Want to copy me? and do exactly like I did

try sit and get fucked up worse than my life is My name is comes out as a single in January 1999 The Slim Shady LP comes out a month later in February and features only three songs that involve Dr. Dre counting this one, though Dre's cosign

is crucial and audible throughout. This is one of those deals where it's technically still the 90s, but it's not until the 21st century when Eminem truly becomes every Batman villain simultaneously. Also, in terms of corrupting the youth of America, if you grew up in the 90s,

then most likely you were already grown up when this song hits, or as grown up as you're going to get. I am 20 years old when my name is comes out. I am no longer glued MTV. I am not radicalized by Eminem, the way I might have been radicalized if he'd blown up when I was 12. And as a consequence, I think I will always approach Eminem from a strange emotional remove, a limbo of sorts. I don't see him through a child's eyes or a teenager's, but I don't see him through an adult's eyes either.

We are suffering from parallel permanent arrested developments. But I understand, of course, why this song delighted kids and terrified parents. The chords here. the bright, shiny, candy-like keyboard chords right here. This is, hey kids, do you like violence incarnate? This is as insidious as pop music gets. This is the dirty version of my name is. In the clean version, the MTV version, he just rips Pamela Lee's lips off.

It's much better. You hear it and you don't hear it. It all blows right by you and yet you understand perfectly. It is legitimately beautiful as music. It is world historically appalling as speech. Maybe you never want to hear this person's voice again. Maybe you'll never have another favorite rapper ever again. Maybe both.

It'd be so much more tolerable or at least ignorable if his comic timing were worse. Right? unfortunately very few rappers of his or any other generation have better comic timing i know you blew up when the women rush your stance try to touch your hands like some screaming usher fans this guy white castle ask for my autographs so i'm finding dear Dave thanks for the support asshole I laugh at dear Dave thanks for the support asshole every time it is the proverbial laugh through gritted teeth. There is no other kind of laughter

in Eminem's universe. Or anyway, all the other kinds of laughter are even worse. Am I coming to going? I can barely decide. I just drank and fit the vodka. Dare me to drive. Go ahead. It will be a year or so before we revisit

that line and its implications on Stan off Eminem's second blockbuster album 2000s, the Marshall Mathers LP. But if we talk about any of the other songs on that record. We also have to talk about the song Kim, but I will never forget walking into my college record store and finding the Marshall Mathers LP in one of the CD preview kiosks, you know, at the headphones. And for reasons I will never

understand, I jump straight to the song called Kim. And pound for pound is probably the single most unpleasant musical experience I've ever had in my life. And if I had one wish, I'd wish to never have to think about the song Kim again. So forget it. Okay, before I lose my nerve, let's get on with it and deal with the other songs on the slim, shady LP that we do have to discuss. Now before you walk in the door to slicker store and try to get money out the floor, you better think of the consequence. Who are you? I'm your motherfucking conscience. I have made the executive decision not to excerpt the second verse of guilty conscience in which Eminem and Dr. Dre advise a 21-year-old guy on what to do with the second verse.

the 15-year-old girl because nobody needs that shit. But you can't pretend that verse doesn't exist either. Can you? Same deal with the third verse where Eminem needles dray about assaulting Dee Barnes. Even right away in 1999. And for the next, you know, a couple of decades thereafter, Eminem's music is basically unavoidable. And the fundamental moral dilemma of Eminem is extra unavoidable.

The ugliness only magnified by the pop superstar, prettiness, the misogyny, the homophobia, and the reality that those two words are the only two words that accurately describe what they're describing. For plenty of people, for plenty of critics and people in positions of legitimate music industry power, this shit was disqualifying. The editor-in-chief of Billboard magazine, Timothy White, took it upon himself to write a March 1999 editorial that accuses Eminem's label of making money by exploiting the world's misery. He describes the Slim Shady LP as

a debut album whose main themes include drugging, raping, and murdering women. And this editorial climaxes with the line indeed, to champion the objectification of human beings as mere exploitable sex props leads us back to the worst crime against humanity in history, slavery, end quote. Okay, the public conversation about Eminem has never been normal or civil or chill. Not for one second, but the whole thing about Eminem's technical greatness, making him quite possibly spiritually intolerable, goes double for Eminem and Dr. Dre together.

The way they egg each other on. Eminem needed Dr. Dre musically to become a pop star. In 1999, in a much different and far more hostile environment for white rappers, Eminem needed Dr. Dre's co-signed to become a credible rapper. Plenty of people can listen to guilty conscience and not think about any of that shit, and I don't begrudge those people, but nor do I begrudge the people who can't listen to it at all. Okay, that was no fun. Neither is this.

Come on, hey, hey, we go into the beach. Grab a couple of toys and let dad that strap you in the car seat. Oh, where's mama? She's taking a little nap in the trunk. Oh, that smell. Dad must have run over a skunk. I still don't feel like talking about 97 Bonnie and Clyde, but yes, oh Christ, this is the song where Eminem fantasizes about killing his baby's mother and dumping her body in the lake

with the baby coups provided by his actual daughter, Haley. Eminem told Rolling Stone, quote, I lied to Kim and told her I was taking Haley to Chuck E. Cheese that day. But I took her to the studio. When she found out I used our daughter to write a song about killing her, she fucking blew. We had just got back together for a couple of weeks. Then I played her the song and she bugged the fuck out.

End quote, reasonable. This is not a Dr. Dre Enterprise, this song. Like much of the rest of the Slim Shady LP, It was co-produced by Eminem and the Bass Brothers. But once again, the ultra-catchy pop insidiousness makes this situation exponentially worse. Here's what we're going to do, actually. Here's how we'll handle 97 Bonnie and Clyde.

We're tapping in Tori Amos. Wake up, sweepie head, we're here. Before we play, we're going to take one before a widow, along the beer. Tori Amos covered this song in 2001, on her strange little girl's album. And this too is one of the least pleasant musical experiences I've ever had. But I'm kind of glad it exists.

Tori explained it to Time Magazine like this. Eminem represents so much right now to a whole group of people. And he's a great poet. But when you kill your wife, you don't get to control whom she becomes friends with when she's dead. End quote. Also, she told Blender magazine, I was attracted to the wife who was faceless and nameless.

Everyone's grooving to this tune and nobody seemed to care about her. End quote. So Tori's version of this song is what Mommy hears from the trunk. I like to imagine Eminem listening to the Tori version and making the bug-eyed, holy shit, what the fuck is going on face that he's making in most of the movie Eight Mile. Eminem, to his credit, has never shied away from talking. about any of these things or responding to any of the blistering criticism of his music, even if he's never backed down. In Rolling Stone in 1999, he says, my album isn't for younger

kids to hear. It has an advisory sticker, and you must be 18 to get it. That doesn't mean younger kids won't get it, but I'm not responsible for every kid out there. I'm not a role model, and I don't claim to be. End quote, nearly 20 years later, in an especially fascinating 2017 conversation with David Marquesi and Vulture, M is asked directly if it's off-based to criticize him as a misogynist, and M says, quote, I think it is, because I've had my share of experiences with women where I've felt a certain way and been mad enough to make songs about those feelings. All the bullshit around that. I'm not making an excuse, but the mentality that I've had since I was rapping at open mics was that you better have shit that's going to get a

reaction or you will not be accepted when you're on the mic. Your first, second, third, and fourth line, better grab attention or you're done. That attitude morphed into my music. A lot of times I'm saying stuff just to get that reaction. Maybe I took it too far sometimes. End quote. Yeah, maybe. My name is, is not Eminem's best song in any sense, nor is it his worst song in any sense. but it sets the foundation for both. Prepare yourself, this song says, subliminally but also not that subliminally. And we all prepared ourselves as best we could.

That's the censored line. That's the line on MTV. That's the theoretically less offensive line. That's who we're dealing with here. This is how the 90s end, spiritually if not literally, and not a moment too soon. What I know is that my name is is one of the better and more devastatingly effective debut singles in rap history. And I am very glad that I was not an impressionable 12-year-old at the time, and I'm especially glad that I wasn't the parent of an impressionable 12-year-old at the time.

My mom's outsized reaction to random heart songs and OPP. I understand that a little better now. But she had no idea what was coming, pop star wise. But then again, nobody did. Our guest today, and this is weird, it's Justin Sales. Ringer Deputy Music Lead, editor, my editor, day one editor and producer of this podcast, and host of the Radnew Ringer podcast, The Weddinger Scammer.

Justin, thank you for being here the whole time, including right now. Hello. Rob, I've been waiting for this moment for two years. I'm curious, what do you think the listeners of this show think of me? Because at one point, you tweeted out about the editing process and how I asked you to split up a couple of long sentences. And then I don't know what the opposite of a Stan is, but I developed a few of those. You were admonished for not letting me cook. Do I recall that correctly?

Yes. And Rob, I don't know. Do I let you cook or do I not let you cook? I would like to say on the record that you absolutely let me cook. I laid 8,000 words on Eminem on you. and it was I think 7 p.m. your time last night and you processed them at an inhuman rate with an inhuman level of skill you let me cook and I'm very grateful to you for that and I will defend you against all random Twitter users who allege otherwise. It was a law of sentence. It was a good idea. It was a good

idea to split up that sentence. I think that's very important to say. I'm not infallible, Justin. Well, my biggest question for you right now is considering that you filed 8,000 words about Eminem to me and you were working on it until the very last moment. How's your mental health right now, Rob? How's your mental state? How are you feeling? I don't feel that good, to be honest with you. I am a little far. I don't know. I think you're in better spirits than I am. I think you deal with Eminem better than I do in general. I really do. We can discuss why that might be, but you, Yeah, it's a lot to deal with. You know, to like write about Eminem at great length and then to go like take my daughter to the park.

This is a very unnatural feeling. Yeah. And this, of course, is happening while the Drake album is out, which features his son very prominently. There's just a lot of kids. I don't want to deal. I'm going to, I don't have to write about that record. And so I'm going to listen to that record when I'm good and ready. And if that's, you know, on Christmas Day of me.

next year, then that's what's going to happen. Justin, in addition to your other activities, which include owning a rad dog named Trina and running marathons for spite, you are also a veteran rapper and producer of rap music. Tell me about your path musically, just to lay a foundation here. Rob, that is the most beautiful and the most bizarre introduction I'll ever receive. If I'm ever elected into Cooperstown, I want you presenting me. I'll be there. Yeah, I, in a past life, was a white rapper.

And that started from the time I was young. That started from before I was aware of Eminem's existence. I was like probably like 13, 14. I was like 14 when Eminem my name came out. I was vaguely aware of him from the Slim Shady EP, but it predates all that. And I put out a couple records that you probably don't have to go that far down a Google rabbit hole to find.

I'm not embarrassed of them. It was mostly as a producer at that point. I had realized it's easier to kind of like, you know, distanced yourself from it down the road if you're just making the beats. But I have enjoyed rap music from a young age, and I have served, I've done various things from rapping to producing to DJing and all of them varied, various degrees of seriousness over the years. We're off to a great start here, I have to say.

We are. I think it's going great. I think this is excellent long-honed rapport right here. What happens to rap music and what happens to white rappers in particular when Eminem happens? How does he alter the landscape? You know, I was thinking about this a lot, and I think about this a lot in relation to my experience right away. When I was like 14, 15, I used to go to a weekly open mic at a place called the Providence Black Repertory Company, and I was one of the few white kids there. I was very young. And, you know,

part of this could have been that I was too young to really process everything around me. But I felt very welcome. And then when Eminem dropped, there was a period where it felt like, oh, this now feels like, it feels like I'm an unwelcome guest in this house. And I'm like, I've come to appreciate that at hindsight, right? To have that experience early on because you can see a world where like a lot of white kids who came into rap at some point after that

probably weren't fully appreciative of the fact that they were white kids partaking in this, right? Because what you have that immediately happens after that, in my experience, was within six months, you had a lot of other white kids at this weekly open mic. And I think that just happens in general

after that. There are just a bunch of white rappers everywhere. And they are white rappers that are very focused on there was, we'll talk about his technical abilities down the road, but it kind of changed the scope of that thing.

What I will say about Eminem, and I was thinking about this, and I just had this thought before we jumped on, I think that Eminem was the first white rapper that made other white kids want to be rappers. I think about like, the Beast Boys, you know, you're a few years older than me. You know, not many, but you were, like, more present when, like, Paul's boutique was coming out.

I think I was, like, six or seven when Paul's boutique was coming out. By the time, I was fully aware of the BC Boys, they were kind of more for, like, skaters and, you know, especially by time. Yeah, they were rock stars. Yeah. And, you know, vanilla ice was a joke. Third base, House of Pain. They were just there.

Milk bones. People like that were just big nothings. You had underground, you had underground rappers starting in like the mid-90s. You had your company flows with LP and whatnot, right? But in terms of someone who could rap credibly, like, you know, who the skills were apparent and felt like a legitimate, I don't know. I don't want to use a word beacon, but like just this thing that white kids could aspire to. Yeah. Phrasing sounds all.

But, you know, it's, uh, Eminem might have been the first one who made these kids in mass feel like they could pick up a mic. Do you think that they were drawn to the technical ability or, you know, the nastiness? I think it's a little of both. It's, it's interesting to hear you talk about, um, you know,

the idea of a 12 year old latching on to this music. Um, and that you were thankful that you weren't 12, uh, when this came out. it's um i do think there's a certain like south park quality to those early records that just that just kids between yeah cartman yeah cartman yeah he i mean his name pops up a few times in m&m songs at some point but you know the late 90s were a time where that was that

like juvenile just like nasty humor was just kind of in the air um I often think that some of the M&M stuff was too silly to be offensive, and then some of it was too offensive to be silly. You know, it kind of works both ways. But I think people were probably more drawn to the personality, like definitely the personality first and then the technical ability second. So when Open Might Nights are lousy with M&M clones, like when the white rapper deluge happens.

Like, what's the hardest thing to replicate about what he does? Like, the technical ability or the charisma part. Like, what's harder to replicate? It's the charisma, right? Like, anybody can study a craft, but, like, it's different between, like, learning to play the notes and play them and play them in a certain way, right? Like, play them with a certain style, right? Like, Jimmy Hendricks is not Jimmy Hendricks because he can play those notes like that.

Jimmy Hendricks is Jimmy Hendricks because he can play like that with, like, this certain style, the certain attitude, right? And it's, it's this, it's absolutely 100% harder to be that charismatic, like world historically charismatic. No matter what we think about the music or him as a personality, he had a charisma. I was listening to a lot of the early songs, like a lot of, you know, to reference Stan, all the, all the, the shit he did with Raucas, you know, that shit was fat. And like the way he just, even as an underground rapper, just jumps out on these songs. Part of that is the voice.

Part of that is because of the technical ability, but it's almost impossible to replicate that. Now, the technical ability, he's in the probably top two, three percent of people that's ever rapped in that regard, right? You know, I think on some days you could probably even put them a little bit higher just from pure technical ability. But, you know, you can study to get there.

You can never study to have that kind of charisma. Is this related to your silly little guy theorem? Is it time to talk about this theorem? I'm very excited for this. Okay. Yes. My take is that Eminem is only enjoyable when he's being a silly little guy. And that the worst thing that ever happened to him was the way I am.

And when he got like this real hard, bitter edge to him after he became famous. And it was basically I enjoy the nasally Eminem more than I enjoy the Eminem yelling at me. And I enjoy the Eminem who's kind of like loose and playing around with the beat, right? The guy who's like, the guy who's looking for the craziest word to rhyme

instead of the guy who is looking for the perfect rhyme scheme. Like the guy, like, basically what I'm saying is rap god Eminem is the worst possible version of Eminem. It's tough. It's a lot to absorb rap god M&M. I put on a song like Rap God and I'm like this guy is, I cannot even fathom this talent and I am exhausted by it. I have no desire to hear it. But then I hear a song like as the world turns off of the Slim Shady LP.

And it is like the most like 12 year old humor is he talks about a woman literally biting off his leg. like an egg roll, you know, swallows his leg hole, like an egg roll. And it's like, this is so stupid. There are sound effects. Yeah, it's so stupid. It's so silly. But this is so fun.

Like, this is so loose. And like, I think that heaviness really starts to creep in while he's halfway through making that Marshall Mathers LP. And like, The Way I Am is one of the last songs he makes on that record. And it kind of becomes this prison for the rest of his career where it's just rhyme scheme, rhyme scheme, rhyme scheme. And it's just great.

great. Can we just have fun? Does that in turn make the Slim Shady LP's most fun record if fun is a way that you think about this person in general? Rob, do you think that Eminem has a good album? I think I would agree with him in saying that Marshall Mathers is the closest. I would put that there. And I would say Slim Shady, if it strikes you right,

I think hangs together is a full album. I like the way that a song like Rock Bottom, I like the way that he's not famous yet. There's a realization that he's about to get famous. And as you say, like there's a playfulness, even if it's ugly, even if it's clunky. Like there is a relative lightness to Slim Shady that you're never going to get again.

And that's very appealing to me and certainly more appealing than rap god, etc. So I think if you, I think the first. first two records come the closest, and I do think that they get there. I really enjoy a lot of Eminem raps. I enjoy single songs. I can put on the Slim Shady, and I can enjoy almost all of it from a rapping perspective. I think some of the production

on that album just really doesn't hold up, like, come on everybody, and my fault, like, the production on those songs are, like, yeah, my fault is, I can't deal with my fault, yeah, okay. You know, it was funny. Being in, you know, being in high school in 1998, um, fucking kids loved blasting my fault out of their acurers or whatever they were driving. It was, it was bad. It was bad.

That's grim. Yeah. This is why I don't go near Rhode Island. Yeah. For people who don't know where I'm from, then I'm going to get that reference. I was, I was actually discussing this with our,

with our boss, Sean Fantasy the other day, who, you know, worked for many rap magazines and actually covered Eminem at one point. He prefers Slim Shady LP to the Marshall Mathers LP. I think I'd rather put on the Slim Shady LP, but I think the Marshall Mathers LP is probably the closest he has to like a,

you know, capital G great album. Yeah, I think that, but slim, shady LP, it's silly, it's fun. It has role model, which I think is probably the best song of his that's, like, available widely on streaming. Okay, that's a strong statement. All right. I believe you have another theorem that his career changed entirely after both Renegade, his collaboration with Jay-Z, and then Ether, Naza's, fame JZ,

discrack at which he said, Eminem murdered you on your own shit. Like, tell me about this theorem. What happens to Eminem as a result of that? Well,

let's actually, I think this dovetails with another question you had, and I think we can kind of discuss them hand in hand. You were discussing how important, you wanted to talk about how important

the Drey cosine was. And the reality was it was very important, especially in the days before the, internet. We can talk about after like how that's changed. Um, but the, the Dre cosign was obviously very important at a time where white rappers were still living in a post-M&M world. I mean, sorry, in a post-vanilla ice world, right? Where, you know, even if you had,

like, even if the rapper had some abilities and like they weren't trying to do a vanilla ice thing, there was always just kind of that thing in the back, in back, you know, it's just this thing that hung over them. And the Dr. Dre co-sign was very important. But I don't think that Eminem was largely considered like one of the greats in the larger hip-hop community until that one-two punch of Renegade and Ether. Because now he appears on Renegade in 2001 on Jay-Z's The Blueprint, an album that I think was engineered to be the greatest rap album ever.

I'm not saying it is, but I'm saying that Jay-Z went into this thinking, I'm going to make my five mic. This is my prestige album. This is the album I will be remembered by, right? He has one feature on it, and it's Eminem. And do you think Eminem rap better than him on that? Yes.

Okay. I go back and forth all the time. I was actually, this morning, I was ranking the four verses on it, And I don't think the audience needs to hear me do that. That's exciting. Yeah, it was great content, great for content. But this morning, I felt like he did as well, right?

So, one, he gets that boost from that. And it's this thing that everyone's thinking, but nobody's really saying. And then in probably the most famous rap battle ever, Nause just goes, and Eminem murdered you on your own shit to Jay. And it got such a reaction because it was true. And I think it became this moment that was like, it really kind of added this extra stamp of credibility. And crucially, the song also turns Stan into a noun.

Ether also turns Stan into a noun, right? It wasn't like, it wasn't like Stan dropped. And then everyone was like, oh, that guy, you're a stand for that guy. It was when Nas said it, it was like, wait, what the fuck did he just say? Like, he just, oh my God. And that it's just those two songs back to back, I think, actually cemented Eminem as one of the greats. Changed his legacy. Do you think, okay, so his legacy, the public perception, prior to that, do you think Eminem considered himself one of the greats?

And do you think that part of his problem going forward is that he now needs to live up to this public perception of him as one of the greats? Or is he already thinking that? Or is that just the way any rapper thinks that they're one of the greats? or did he actually believe it by then? I don't know. Like, I can't put myself in his head to that degree. I think, you know, Eminem is a student of rap, right? Like, even...

I was listening to some deep cuts this morning. I tried to go very deep, right? Over the course of this past week. And, you know, in 2013, he put a song on Call of Duty that was a cover of a Black Moon song, right? On the Call of Duty soundtrack. And it's like, this was a guy who just studies, studies

the history of rap, the sport of rap, you know, until I collapsed the sport. Right. And it was one of his biggest songs. He lists off his top 10 rappers.

And, you know, he lists Red Man. And he puts Red Man ahead of himself on that list. And I don't know where Eminem, if you asked him right now in 2020, where he would put himself on that list.

I do think he obviously thinks he's a great rapper. Like, I think that, I think that Eminem thinks he was put on this earth to wrap and pretty reasonable argument that he was. But I don't know if that, to me, it's always been more the fame affected him. Right.

This chip on his shoulder because of, you know, I think another thing that we don't really discuss in terms of Eminem, he didn't get famous until he was a little bit older. Right. Mid-20s was, yeah. Late 20s. Late 20s.

Eminem's 50 now, right? So that would mean 25 years ago. So this was like 26, 27, 28 when he was blowing up. That's a big difference. Compare that to when Nas. Illmatic came out when he was like 1920, you know. Jay-Z was also a little bit older, but Jay-Z always had like this wizened thing to him, you know.

J-C had been around the industry for a little bit. Eminem just always kind of had this chip on his shoulder. and I think it kind of calcified as he got more famous and a little, like, weirder as a person as he became a celebrity. And I think that was more of the change than anything that had to do with, like, how he viewed himself as a rapper. Now, I do think that at a certain point, he became so obsessed with the craft of rapping that the music became boring. But that's the whole silly little guy versus rap god thing. I think he would agree with that. Like in that vulture, in the David Marquesi interview, he says something like, you know, I'll make a song, I'll listen to it in the car, and I'll realize that I'm not actually saying anything.

Like, this song isn't about anything. I'm just rapping for no reason. You know, lots of great rap music has been about nothing. Right. Yeah. But sometimes Eminem's music insists upon itself. Yes. Yes. To quote another cartoon that I'm sure Eminem fans. Sure. Yes.

Enjoy. What do you make of Detroit's producing Eminem, the insane clown posse, and kid rock? Basically at the same time, what is the deal there in your professional opinion? I've, you know, I knew you wanted to ask this, and I've been struggling with this, because I'm not, I'm not from Detroit. you know my my initial reaction is you know these are specifically all white rappers or rap adjacent people um

um isham was kind of doing yasham or ishaam i always forget how to pronounce it he was doing like a similar hardcore style as like you know iCP kid rock obviously wasn't like that you know the gut is my gut reaction to that is it probably says something about the like the blue collar nature when you get of the city

like I don't want to like speculate on too much of the socioeconomic stuff of Detroit but it does feel like it makes sense based on the ideas

you have of Detroit and like this you know right as the as the auto industry falls out and what have you I don't know

I don't want to go too far down that road I do think it's interesting no but I know what you're saying yeah but I do think

it's interesting a couple things on this though in saying clown posse I'm not intimately familiar with their music I have to be honest but topically

they're not really that far off from early M&M the difference is early M&M is doing this with like a lot more style a lot more technical ability sure kid rock is kid rock but it's also interesting to me that this is happening while there are

I don't really have much to add to Kid Rock is Kid Rock, you know. That's fine. Yeah. But this is also, you know, I also think about this in relation to though, some village is coming up around this time, J. Dilla, T3, those guys.

But I've also been trying to figure out a lot how much Royce the 5-9 influenced M&M versus how much M&M influenced Roeus to 5-9. right like I do think that there was a certain there was a certain like creative alchemy those two had together that they fed off of each other yeah it's a good song on the Slim Shady LP

you know like it's their do you like scary movies I'm not asking that like like scream I'm asking like do you like the song scary movies that's all right I like the song more than I like actual scary movies well I know I know that about you Does the audience know how much you don't like actual scary movies? I think that they can infer it just from the sound of my voice.

Probably. I prefer the song Scary Movies to the song, Come On Everybody, for example. There you go. Oh my gosh. Put it that way. I think that you saying that Eminem views hip-hop as a sport, views rapping as a sport. That's a very useful prism through me to view Eminem, right? that he sees it as a sport, as a competition,

and he came out of battle rapping, the exhaustion that sets in listening to him from, you know, from, you know, the Marjorie Mathers' LP forward. Like, that's based on an aerobic quality, you know, a combative, you know, sport-like mentality that he has about rap music. He's such a rap nerd.

I've always wondered why late period Eminem just never did the thing where he just got some DJ premiere, beats and some Pete Rock beats and like the Alchemist is his tour DJ like why just imagine right right like imagine him just over an album worth of Alchemist beats like I've just never understood why Freddie Gibbs right right yeah why why wouldn't he do something like that instead of you know he rolls out these albums where it's got like a Juice World song and like this this his self-produced songs and like take Heath beats and he's just trying to kind of keep up with the times a little bit in terms of production, if not rapping.

Because he's still, I can't remember when the last time he put out an album was, but he seemed to be still preoccupied with mumble rappers long after everyone was like, no, that's, that's not actually a thing, you know. But I just never understood why this guy who obviously just is a student of rap, just loves rapping so much, just never went and made his, like, legit album, like, do an album, DJ premiere do an album with the alchemist do an do an album with it where you get guys contributing to all of all of those guys contributing never understood right right do you want a black album type record did you want like a 444 type record what is m&m's 444 like this withdrawn i actually don't want

i don't want to hear that i regret saying that out loud that's yeah never mind yeah never mind I just want him I just want him rapping and just feeling loose You know actually There is one later period Eminem album that My dear friend Paul Thompson

Friend of the show He has convinced me Is actually a legitimately good Eminem album And like this is the part where I might burn Whatever credibility I had left After my introduction With where I had to explain

How much rap music I've produced But relapse is, I think 2008-2009 M&M album, completely critically derided. Yep, 2009. Actually deserves a critical reevaluation. It's this weird album where he's doing this weird, this weird indiscernible accent that's kind of half Irish, half Arabic. This is one of the accent deals, right, right.

Half Irish. And it is like his horror core album. It is definitely, which sounds funny discussing it in the context of some of his earlier music, but this is definitely his most like fictionalized horror movie type album. But it's also the album that Dre handled most of the introduction on. Not a bad album. I got to be honest, I mean, I've been completely relapsed-pilled over the past few years by Paul Thompson. I just had to get that take out there.

It's 76 minutes long. It's a great take, but this is also one of his longest records. Even before you get to the deluxe edition, there's a lot of deluxe. There's a lot of penalty content on this record. I can give you a great eight-song EP that would change you. That's what I want. That's what the world want. To sum up, Justin, I have heard several episodes.

in conclusion yeah great transition rob i have heard i have heard several episodes in advance and i am extremely excited for your new podcast the wedding scammer what should we know about this show and what should we not know going into this show this is this was a great transition as your editor absolutely zero zero notes on that front wow i'm a professional they're they're not not going to hate me for editing you. They're going to hate me from being like, why did he strong-arm you into making him ask that question? And I didn't because you're a fan of the wedding scammer, I guess. I am. I absolutely am. So it's a crazy story, and I'll give the 90-second version the best I can, but it's just when I first moved out to L.A. in 2015, I got lightly scammed by a guy. I took a job

at a company that turned out not to be real. And this was this very strange charismatic guy, and he hired me at a media company. He hired me in about 50 other people. And then one day, after a strange couple weeks, shut the company down, never paid anyone. And it was this weird story that always stuck with me, right? I learned little things about the guy. I learned that this strange, charismatic guy who I wasn't really sure was this, you know, he told us he was rich, that he family made all this money in coal, all these weird things. I wasn't sure he was who he really said he was.

And then a couple years later, I learned, oh, this guy is going around using aliases and it's like, holy shit, I got an honest-to-god con man on my hands, right? Like, this is a guy who's using aliases, he's doing all this weird shit. Stuff popped up in the San Francisco Chronicle about him, right? Like just all these weird things.

Moving around. Moving around, changing names. A lot of people saying he owes the money news outlets are now covering this guy. And I'm like, this is crazy. I got an in to this story because I worked for this guy for three weeks and never got paid. So I started doing some research. I find that one of the things he did was ruin people's weddings and keep the money. And then he did a whole bunch of other things. And I learned a lot of things about this guy's past, which you haven't heard yet because you're only on episode three. And I've only three

episodes in less than halfway. Yep. I learn his, uh, I learn his real name. I learn where he is at this exact moment. And the one thing I feel comfortable spoiling in terms of actual episodes, because it's the cold open of episode one is in January 2023, I went to where he is right now, taped a wire on my chest and tried to get him talking on Mike. And whether he actually does or not, is something I will hold off on discussing that comes up later in the series. But I taped an honest-to-god wire on my chest. And I am the deputy music lead at the ringer. I have people who report to me.

I have to write their... You do. I am one of them. Yes. Yes. Their annual reviews. I have to be like, here's room for improvement. Here's the way you can split up sentences.

By the way, your boss was a former white rapper who went to a place with a wire on his chest sink in front to the con man. And I am so proud. And that is available now on the Ringer podcast network, the Weddinger Scammer. Wow, it's Justin Sales. Let him cook. Thank you, Justin, for everything. Thank you, Rob.

Thanks so much to our special guest this week, Justin Sales. A lot of promise in that guy. Thanks, as always, to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. And thanks very much to you. you for listening. And now, without further ado, why don't you go listen to my name is by Eminem. We'll see you next week.