Eminem has inspired countless rappers throughout his career. His style and capability to bend words and flows at will made him extremely aspirational for rising artists. However, even someone as influential as Em had to look up to someone else. For the Detroit MC, he credited a lot of his skill set to two giants in 80s and 90s hip-hop.
In a new interview with D-Stroy on SiriusXM’s Shade 45, he explained how LL Cool J was pivotal in teaching him how to make music. LL’s 1985 album Radio sparked his love for hip-hop and eventually inspired him to write his first rhymes.
“When I was 11, that was the first album I had. I got that tape for Christmas, and it was the first full rap cassette I had. I would just play it front to back, front to back, front to back,” Eminem recalled.
His first performances involved him standing outside with his boombox and rapping along to Radio as cars passed by. Then, he reflected on how “I’m Bad” came out when he was 13, sparking the beginning of Eminem’s career. “He was what made me want to rap in the first place.”
But if LL Cool J was his gateway, artists like Redman helped widen his view of what rapping could be.
Eminem Credits Ll Cool J and Redman for Inspiring Him To Rap
Elsewhere in the conversation, Slim Shady reflected on hearing rappers like Rakim and Kool G Rap introduce the concept of multi-syllable rapping. “He had that delivery and the voice,” he recalled of Rakim. “The way that he said s**t was noticeably more complex, but I couldn’t figure out why it was noticeably more complex than anything that was out yet. Kool G Rap was great at doing that too. He’d rhyme inside the line, then come back with what they originally started rhyming with.”
With time, the game got even sharper. Eventually, New Jersey rapper Redman showed Eminem that you could contort words in ways you wouldn’t expect. “Whut? The Album was one of the most classic hip-hop albums of all-time,” he said of Redman’s debut in 1992. “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.”
“It was kind of like, there’s not really any rules to this s**t anymore,” Eminem added. “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 f**k?’ That whole verse he was doing it. He was rhyming s**t that shouldn’t have been rhymed.”
(Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)
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