12/25/2023 0 Comments Slim shady album art![]() It’s a good joke, and Eminem milks it - he reminds you how much Eighties hip-hop heads loved Pee-wee Herman. If Eminem has a white-rap precedent, it’s Rodney Dangerfield in his strictly-for-tha-hardcore 1983 hit, “Rappin’ Rodney,” in which R-Boogie busted rhymes like, “Steak and sex, my favorite pair/I have them both the same way: very rare.” Eminem is on some serious Dangerfield shit in loser anthems like “My Name Is,” “Brain Damage” and “I’m Shady.” He plays the race card for laughs, goofing on his role as the ultimate white geek, the “class-clown freshman/ Dressed like Les Nessman.” The whine in his upper register recalls other hip-hop comics, like the Beasties’ Ad-Rock, Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav and Cypress Hill’s B-Real, but Eminem has his own flat Midwestern twang to help him parody the white cornball in a black world, kind of like that cop on Sanford and Son or Bentley on The Jeffersons. But when I saw the video, I started to see it take shape for real.Black Sabbath on the Making of 'Vol. shit pretty hard and didn’t quite get it. When Paul played me “My Name Is” and told me he dyed his hair blonde I thought he hit the L.A. I don’t think that the average underground hip hop personality was on it like that. Not the full scope though, but coming from a skateboarding, punk and metal background, I knew the vibe and attitude of the music was something that wasn’t really done in rap at the time and there would be a lot of kids who he would be a voice for. Understandable, but I was riding with them on it. The label didn’t wan’t to spend too much on artwork for an unproven artist. In ’99, did you have any idea how big the album and Em’s career would get? There were other pieces that didn’t get used that we will be unveiling for these 20th-anniversary drops that I think the fans will get a kick out of. The screaming Vicodin was expansion of one of the pills from the Mummy scene. “As the World Turns” and “My Fault” Inspired the Trailer scene. Or at least the one that stood out to me the most. I think it was one of my favorite lines from that song. That line from “Cum On Everybody” brought about the Mummy. “If you ever see video for this shit, I’ll probably be dressed up like a mummy with my wrist slit”. Where did you pull inspiration from for the SSLP art? So in short, a bit of learning, a lot of rhyming and even more jokes. Em and Shadow would push me to be more personal with my music. I learned about compounds from him and Proof. Em had experience and was pretty seasoned at the time, so I learned a bit from just peeping what he was doing: linear buildups, connectivity and taking the punchlines up a notch. Recording “3hree6ix5ive” & 5 Star Generals (some of that Rawkus shit) at DJ Spinna’s was just fun and Spinna’s studio was home turf. Honestly, working back then wasn’t anything more than hanging out with your homie and making music that’s one of the best ways to make music in my opinion. They had a better idea of how epic the song was and how big it might be. When he and Proof played me that line over the phone, I had no idea of the context, so I was just like “Sick, That’s wassup”. He was referring to my song “3hree6ix5ive” on “Stan”. What was it like working with Eminem this early in his career? “I even got the underground stuff you did with Skam2”. We had a lot in common and would hang whenever he was in town. Somewhere in the middle of all that I eventually met Em on one of his trips to NY when he’d come in for shows and studio sessions. Riggs later ended up being an A&R at Shady for a while. Skills and I then took his music up to Riggs at The Source to get him the Unsigned Hype feature. So, I passed it on to a few key underground college radio folks like Bobbito, Mayhem, Baruch, Stony Brook, etc. Back then, they weren’t that connected with the NY underground scene, and I felt that it needed to be heard. At that time he was a lawyer at the firm that now represents Em. I was introduced to Paul (Rosenberg) by a mutual friend that felt I need representation. See what he has to say about it all two decades later. To mark the occasion we linked up with Skam2, whose illustrations can be found in the original album packaging, for unique products that capture the era of SSLP, along with a bit of a retrospective on what it was like to work with Marshall during that time. An exclusive merchandise capsule marking the occasion wouldn’t be complete without the work of the two artists who provided iconic illustrations and photography for the album respectively. It’s been 20 years since the world officially met Slim Shady with the release of SSLP.
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