Okay, so if we know that’s going to happen, what other signs are you looking for that will make you feel encouraged or discouraged by the album’s reception?
I don’t know, I’ve always felt in touch with the people who listen to my music. I make it for them. Anybody else, fuck ‘em. It’s fine if critics or whoever keep thinking I’m not as good as I was. So what I’m looking for — whatever the response or the sales — is things I did right or things I could’ve improved musically. I’m critical of myself and I’m always trying to figure out how to do better. I certainly have not had a perfect career.
I’ve put out bad albums.
Which ones are you thinking of?
hich ones are you thinking of?
Encore was mediocre, and with Relapse — it was the best I could do at that point in time. [Relapse] was a funny album for me because I was just starting back rapping after coming out of addiction. I was so scatterbrained that the people around me thought that I might have given myself brain damage. I was in this weird fog for months. Like, literally I wasn’t making sense; it had been so long since I’d done vocals without a ton of Valium and VicodinAround 2002, Eminem began using Ambien, Valium, and extra-strength Vicodin. After the death of his friend the rapper Proof in a club shooting in 2006, he was consuming “40 to 60 Valium” and “maybe 20, 30” Vicodin a day. In December of 2007, after introducing methadone to the habit, he overdosed and missed Christmas with his children, prompting his path toward sobriety..
I almost had to relearn how to rap.
Is that where all the weird accents on that album came from?
I recorded at least 50 to 60 songs for that album and on each one I would get a little more drastic with the accents, trying to bend the words and make them rhyme in ways they wouldn’t if you just said them regular. It was this gradual thing and I didn’t even realize how accent-heavy the album got. PaulPaul Rosenberg has managed Eminem since the recording
of The Marshall Mathers LP, and co-founded Shady Records with the rapper in 1999. He’s also a recurring character on Eminem’s inter-song skits, playing the straitlaced lawyer asking him to “tone it down a little bit.” Rosenberg was recently named CEO of the iconic hip-hop record label Def Jam, a position he’s expected to assume in early 2018. [Rosenberg] didn’t realize it either until he went and played the music for somebody at Interscope and they were like, “Why is he doing all those accents?”
So yeah, I don’t know how much replay value that album has.