Watch Vintage Eminem Interview, Track His Pre-“Slim Shady” Blow Up Posted by Lucas Garrison on 10/14/13 | Filed under Eminem, Rap Nerdery

"The Marshall Mathers LP 2", will be Eminem’s eighth studio album. It almost seems crazy, since he has been a cornerstone of hip-hop for over a decade but there was a time, 13 Grammys and 220 million albums sold ago, when Eminem was a hungry up-and-comer who was awaiting the release of his debut album, the "Slim Shady LP", and had no idea how popular it would be. Thanks to 2Dopeboyz, we get some insight into the life of Eminem just months before the LP dropped, as they dug up this interview of Em from September of 1998.

This is like digging up the bones of a T-Rex…if that T-Rex was a dope white rapper. For the average hip-hop fan this is dope, but for the nerdiest of rap nerds this interview will likely lead to more questions than answers, like when did “I Just Don’t Give a Fuck/ Brian Damage B-Side” actually drop. So for all you who want to dig even deeper, lets make a timeline of the early Eminem to see just where this interview fits and how it all went down.

1997 Rap Olympics:

Eminem didn’t win the battle—how I don’t know—but he won a much bigger battle there. He passed a demo, "The Slim Shady EP", to Interscope Records. The CEO, Jimmy Lovine got his hands on it and sent to Dr. Dre. The full EP, which includes “Just The Two Of Us” (mentioned in the interview and later known as “'97 Bonnie & Clyde” is below.

October 13, 1998:

In the interview, Slim Shady tells us the first single “I Just Don’t Give A Fuck” with a “Brain Damage” B-Side will drop on the 13th. Since release dates are never set in stone, we wondered if it actually dropped on that day. Sure enough, Shady was right and on October 13, 1998  the first single off the soon to be smash album dropped.

January 25, 1999

Nearly a month before the "Slim Shady" LP drops, Em releases one of his most popular singles, “My Name Is”. To give you and idea of when the song was released, it was the first ever hip-hop video to reach number one on "TRL"…yeah, remember "TRL"??

February 23, 1999

Eminem’s first major label release, the "Slim Shady LP" drops and the rest is history.

September 03, 2010

                                                              

While this has nothing to do with Eminem’s rise, it's still an intertwined piece of history. In the interview, Em mentions his production team, F.B.T Productions, as he is explaining who handles his beats. In the mid 2000s F.B.T began seeking royalties from Aftermath for stuff like digital downloads and ringtones. On September 03, 2010, The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Decision, reversed a decision in favor of Aftermath and required them to pay F.B.T. productions. It is pretty crazy to hear Shady discuss his team in ’98, way before any of the lawsuits; I don’t think anybody expected it to get as big as it did. You can read the whole decision here if you like all that legal jargon.

If you are a fan of dramatic irony, than this interview is for you. It is so crazy to see Eminem literally months before he blows up. Nobody, at that point, could have predicted how popular he would get and hearing him discuss his album, with no idea what is about to come is so fascinating. Regardless of how the "MMLP2" is viewed, Eminem has one of the longest most successful careers of any rapper ever and now, we get to see him just months before it all began; gotta love the internet.