Emile Tells All: The Stories Behind His Classic Records

Emile Tells All: The Stories Behind His Classic Records



Emile: “I went out to Detroit to work with Em. I’ve done shit for Obie; I’ve worked with Proof; I’ve worked with Royce; I’ve done some stuff with D12; I’ve met Eminem a number of times and co-produced songs with him, but I never got the opportunity to have my name on an Eminem album. And he is truly my favorite rapper ever. I listen to The Slim Shady LP all the time.

“Em’s always been pretty self-contained. He’s a phenomenal producer and does his own beats, and generally, if he’s not doing the beat, Dr. Dre is doing the beat. It’s kind of hard to get in there with producers at that level. They don’t need anybody.


“I think on this album, he didn’t want to do all the production. He wanted to focus moreso on writing, rather than getting that deep into the production side and making the beats. Em has been in the game now for a long time and managed to stay ahead of the curve in terms of what new artists are doing. He’s past that ten-year mark, and he’s still ahead of the times.

“I was lucky enough to get the phone call to go to Detroit and get in the studio for a few days and work with him. They take making music very seriously. Em’s not just going to rap on a beat and call it a day. He’s really going to work on the production and arrangement of the song. He’s a producer to the core.

“So I was there, working on ideas. I didn’t come with a bunch of ideas planned out. It was kind of like, ‘Let me set up my equipment and talk to Marshall and see what he is going for, and just try to make stuff, and hopefully make something that inspires him that he wants to rap on and turn into a song.’

“I made a lot of beats, a lot of hard, up-tempo stuff, and he kept saying, ‘Man, I really want to do like a classic rock kind of vibe. Like a classic rock sample. Something that I might have listened to when I was a kid on the rock radio station.’ So I always had that in my head, but I didn’t have any records or anything like that with me.

“So one morning I got up a little earlier and went digging in Detroit. I got a car to take me around, and I went to all these record stores, just buying classic ’70s rock records. I was at People’s Records in downtown Detroit, which is a great record store, and [Eminem’s manager] Paul Rosenberg called me like, ‘Where the fuck are you? Em’s about to be at the studio and you’re not here.’

"I was at People’s Records in downtown Detroit, which is a great record store, and [Eminem’s manager] Paul Rosenberg called me like, ‘Where the fuck are you? Em’s about to be at the studio and you’re not here.’"

“And I tried to explain, ‘I’m buying records.’ And I was far from the studio in downtown Detroit. So I grabbed a pile of ‘70s rock records, like a crate of 75, and rushed back to the studio.

“So I was flipping through them and Em would be in the studio doing his own thing writing. And I remember dropping the needle on Black Sabbath ‘Going Through Changes,’ and he walked in the room right as I dropped the needle. And it started playing, and we both looked at each other like, ‘That could be the one.’

““And he obviously liked the Black Sabbath song [and was familiar with it], and he gave me the look like he was into it. There wasn’t a lot of communication, but he definitely had the eyebrow raise like, ‘That could be something!’

“I went to work and started chopping it up and arranging the song. I came up with the chorus and the verses and some drums, but not the final drums. Mike Strange, who’s Em’s engineer and also a great guitar player, played some guitars on it. So we had the core of the music set, and I left Detroit.

" Proof gave me my start in the business. Fast forward to when we did that record last year, it’s like I’m in the studio with Em, and he’s writing a really heavy record and talking about Proof on the song."

“Em didn’t do the song yet, but he was into it. He seemed to gravitate to that more than the other stuff I had been working on. Like Royce, Em picks up on different stuff in the beat to rap along to. He called me about the drums, and I remember I tried a few different drum ideas. I kept doing them and sending them and sending them [until] he was comfortable with them, and he ended up writing the song.

“It’s another special record for me, because of the history I have with those dudes and that camp, and Proof giving me my start in the business. Fast forward to when we did that record last year, it’s like I’m in the studio with Em, and he’s writing a really heavy record and talking about Proof on the song.

“There’s no one else like that for me in the business. This is a part of me. It wasn’t like me just cutting some song. I have a loyalty and allegiance to Em and Proof and that crew. I got my start with these dudes. A song like that, and how it came to life—it was full circle for me.

“I’ve known those guys for years, they’re all my friends. And finally having that record on this Eminem album, this amazing new album, with my favorite rapper in the game, one of the best to ever do it, it was like, ‘Here it is. I got my Eminem record.’ It was a big, big deal for me. Seriously.”


http://www.complex.com/music/2011/10/emile-tells-all-the-stories-behind-his-classic-records/eminem-going-through-changes