Key Takeaways
- Eminem credited Redman with opening a “whole new world” for his writing by bending words that do not naturally rhyme through creative enunciation.
- He praised Redman’s classic debut Whut? The Album, distinctive voice and steady artistic growth, while highlighting the “ATM” and “staple gun” rhyme from “My Zone!”
- During the Shade 45 interview, he also celebrated Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Nas, 2Pac and LL COOL J for advancing rap’s lyrical complexity.
Eminem has taken a moment to salute Redman while acknowledging just how important the New Jersey rapper has been to his own career.
On Friday (September 4), the Detroit legend was interviewed by D-Stroy as part of a special Back to School Shade 45 episode, in which he discussed first hearing multi-syllable raps when listening to rappers like Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane.
"I remember when I first heard multi-syllables, I didn’t really understand that they [were] connecting three and four and five syllables at one time," Em said. "So I kinda didn’t hear it until I started hearing other rappers do it."
He then highlighted the evolution of multi-syllable raps, noting MCs such as Redman, Nas and 2Pac, all of whom Eminem believes "kept pushing the genre forward" with their "lyrical complexity."
During the latter part of the interview, Em was asked to talk about Redman's impact specifically, who he's often credited as being a big influence, famously name-dropping him on "Til I Collapse."
"Whut? The Album was one of the most classic hip-hop albums of all-time," Em said of Redman's 1992 debut. "When he came out with that first album, it sounded so sonically different and his delivery was so captivating because his voice had so much body on it, like bass and deepness and just the right amount of everything on it."
"But Redman was one of those artists that would drop an album and he would get better the next album. And then he’d get even better the next album," Em continued.
Eminem also mentioned Redman's verse on "My Zone!" taken from his fourth album, Doc's Da Name 2000, where he raps: "These paper-thin n***as, rob 'em at the ATM with a staple gun."
"I was like, ‘How the fuck did he just rhyme ATM and staple gun rhyme and they sound like they rhyme?'" Em recalled. "He was one of the first people I heard to do that… Bend the words."
"It was kind of like, there's not really any rules to this shit anymore," he continued. "You can take two words that naturally don't rhyme and you can enunciate them to make them rhyme; so that opened a whole new world for me. When I heard Redman do that for the first time I was like, 'What the fuck?' That whole verse he was doing it. He was rhyming shit that shouldn't have been rhymed."
Eminem and Redman previously collaborated on "Off the Wall," which appeared on the Nutty Professor soundtrack. IN an interview with Red Bull last year, Redman said that he and Em had discussed collaborating again but that their busy schedules just haven't aligned.
Elsewhere in his new Shade 45 interview, Eminem also gave heavy props to LL COOL J, spending a lot of time praising LL's second album, Bigger and Deffer.
