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Steve Miller background story of Eminem sampling “Abracadabra” on “Houdini”

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Legendary Steve Miller has recently done an interview on The San Diego Union Tribune where he talked about how his collaboration with Eminem come about.

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer didn’t have to think twice about collaborating with Detroit icon and fellow Rock Hall inductee Eminem, whose recent chart-topping song, “Houdini,” heavily interpolates Miller’s 1982 hit, “Abracadabra,” and was streamed more than 355 million times on Spotify to date. Check out the conversation below.

Interviewer: When you play “Abracadabra,” do you tell the audience about Eminem sampling it for his song, “Houdini?”
Steve Miller: Yeah. I tell a little story about putting the song together, we vamp a bit and then go into it. I feel really great that Eminem used “Abracadabra.” It’s a good use of it!

Interviewer: How did that come about?
Steve Miller: He called that he’d like to use “Abracadabra.” He said: “I’ve written a bunch of verses and we’ve done a track. I’ll send it to you.” I listened to it, called him back, and said: Yeah, that’s fine, man. It’s great! And if you want, I’ll send you the stems (individual audio files).” So, I sent him my actual recorded stems for “Abracadabra” so he could work with them.

Then, I got a lesson about what social media has done to the record business. When I put out “Abracadabra” in 1982, it became the No. 1 record in the world and that took about 12 months. With Eminem, two days after we signed our agreement, he released “Houdini” at 12:01 a.m. on a Friday. Within 30 minutes, 60,000 people had watched the video on YouTube. By 10 a.m. it was 3 million. Nearly 50 million people streamed it, worldwide, in just the first week.

I’d never seen anything like that. It was crazy, just instantly. So, that was a real lesson. And Eminem was very cool. I put out a little release (saying) I appreciated that it was legit. It feels good that a whole other group of people are listening to my music (through Eminem) and digging it.

For the full interview, visit SDUT here.