Royce Da 5’9″ has recently set down with Lando Bando on The Hip Hop Lab where the Detroit legend had a long conversation about why young Detroit rappers misunderstand Eminem.
“I think the youngins are just regurgitating anecdotical s**t. I don’t think they understand how much they don’t make sense. It’s like, you go and do an interview, you say your top five is Juan, Blade, Herc, Malik and Jesse. ‘What about Eminem? Oh, no, no, no, no. I didn’t really grow up listening to that but I think he is a great lyricist tho.’ I can respect that answer. So…8 Mile, that was not an accurate depiction of Detroit ni**a? Ain’t nobody be on 8 Mile…’I like Royce, Slum Village but they ain’t real Detroit sound.’ I could even take that. Now you are in a position where you can go out and paint the picture of Detroit however you think the world should see Detroit. The fact that you benefited from years and years of groundwork that myself, Marshall, Sean… There are ni**as who are benefiting from things that you don’t even realize. Maybe they will realize in retrospect.”
“Now that you have arrived in this place and Detroit is more visible in terms of the world viewership, just connected to the rest of the world. We used to be like a sea market. Me, Marshall, Slum Village, we were representing sea market. That’s were the no-fly-zone came from. People used to just come here, shoot through real quick, grab a bag and keep it pushing. Trick Trick said ‘no no no no, no more!’ He ruined his relationships, he put his livelihood on the line to stand on the frontline of the city. Nobody gotta say thank you for it or nothing like that. These are just facts. All of these are documented. So, now, you guys got how you all wanted. You are cool. The world loves you all. The world is biting your style. You rap like Detroit, you sound like Detroit, you look like Detroit. What exactly do you want Eminem to do? Do you want to sign to Shady Records? Everybody wanna sign Icewear Vezzo right now. Everybody wanna sign Peasy. Do you see them sign to Shady Records? I think the reason Shady Records is so successful is because they know who they are.”
“They have been publicly condemning Marshall in an attempt to separate themselves from being associated with his name because they think that’s the cool thing to do. It’s not cool thing because ‘Eminem doesn’t f**k with ni**as,’ it’s considered cool thing because ni**as have found a comfort zone in complaining about things. I wonder if they know how crazy they sound. They are making demands based off of an assumption that you have that this person does not f**k with you. They have nothing, no actions, no previous that they can correlate any of this feelings to. They are like ‘WHY HE DON’T EMBRACE ME.’ It speaks to your ignorance and immaturity and how reasonable that you even are willing to be to demand that he pull up. Pull up WHERE, NI**A? FOR WHAT? WHAT ARE WE PULLING UP FOR? Bro, you are talking about grown a** man. Put a daughter to a college. He has been famous for 20 years. The man has not hang out in a nightclub for more than 10 years. The man has not took a drink, thought about drug in over 10 years. He is not same young, wild, out here having fun Eminem that he was when G-unit was running around.”
“Have you seen Eminem on tour? He is just who he is. When he was out and was moving around a certain way, he conducted his business in a way that was indicative of what he was doing at that time. It’s no different from now. He is conducting his business but it’s indicative who he is now and where they are as a brand. Who they sign is none of you ni**as f**king business. Why the f**k do you care if Shady Records sign Griselda? And you don’t want to give him credit just because it’s not the kind of music that you are not into? So we are looking at bunch of crybaby ni**as complaining and yelling about perceived problem not coming with any solutions.”
“Nobody blew the whistle about Marshall getting on that f**king 95 minutes song with all these f**king rappers he didn’t know. He did that because I called him and talked him into it. And it took me a long time to talk him into it. Thank God he adores Sean, he loves Sean. He did not like the beat. You don’t understand how it feels to have a beat that you don’t like that you gotta write the song to. And you gotta represent yourself in somebody else’s world that you don’t even understand. And they don’t understand yours but you are forcing it because you wanna try to make people feel better. Em been damn near on every album Sean got and they shot videos.”
“My first impression at Sada Baby was he creatively fearless. I gotta respect that before anything. That ni**a entertained me before I even understand what he was saying. And I’m not sure that I’m an executive that’s gonna take to the next level. I was sitting there when Dr. Dre played My Name Is sample to Eminem and Marshall said ‘Hi, my name is…’ and Dre was like ‘WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY? YOU GOTTA DO THAT’ and he picked a piece of the record that had been sampled over and over again on classic records in hip-hop history but this was way at the end of the song where not other producer would thought to even pull from and that’s where the My Name Is came from. And My Name Is is the reason why Marshall is the Marshall he is today. Without Dr. Dre to have that divine instinct to be able to figure out which record takes you to the next level…without that.. you know what I mean?!… Dre did it over and over again. He did it for Game, he did it for Fifty, for Marshall, he did it for Snoop. Four times he changed the world. He did it with NWA, he did it with himself, he did it with D.L.C. So, Sada Baby, Tee Grizzley, they don’t need Eminem. Who knows what Sada Baby needs? Who knows if he needs anything? That’s up to hi to find that you and figure it out during his journeys. It’s up to us as OGs help facilitate that and do anything we can to water the seed.” – said Nickel
Then Royce continues talking about Kanye West saying signing Big Sean was the worst decision he has ever made, Donda album, Drake and more. You can watch the full thing below:
